Schlump, written by Hans Herbert Grimm, was published anonymously in 1928 and was one of the first German novels to describe World War I in all its horror and absurdity, and it remains one of the best. What really sets it apart is its remarkable central character. Who is Schlump? A bit of a rascal and a bit of a sweetheart, a victim of his times, an inveterate survivor, maybe even a new type of...

From one of Russia’s most exciting new voices, Wound follows a young lesbian poet on a journey from Moscow to her hometown in Siberia, where she has promised to bury her mother’s ashes. Woven throughout this fascinating travel narrative are harrowing and at times sublime memories of her childhood and her sexual and artistic awakening. As she carefully documents her grief and interrogates her...

It is a pseudo-autobiographical postmodernist prose poem by Russian writer and satirist Venedikt Erofeev. Written between 1969 and 1970 this book was passed around in samizdat for a long time. The story follows an alcoholic intellectual, Venya (or Venichka), as he travels by a suburban train on a 125 km (78 mi) journey from Moscow to visit his beautiful beloved and child in Petushki, a city...

The poem 'Odyssey', created by the genius of the legendary epic poet of Ancient Greece Homer, is one of the greatest works of world literature, a creation full of full-blooded life, bright fantasy and poetic brilliance. The dangerous adventures of the cunning and long-suffering Odyssey (he, passionately striving to go home to Ithaca, will have to fight with Poseidon, visit the country of cruel...

Composed around 730 B.C., Homer’s Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion. From the explosive confrontation between Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, and Agamemnon, the inept leader of the Greeks, through to its tragic conclusion, The Iliad explores the...

The Egyptian (1945) is a historical novel by the Finnish writer Mik Valtari (1908-1979), which became a bestseller all over the world and has been translated into more than thirty languages. Mika Valtari managed to create a work that attracts not only with exciting plot twists and turns and authentic historical entourage, but also with a sense of involvement in the events that took place in...

The Snail on the Slope takes place in two distinct worlds. One is the Administration, an institution run by a surreal, Kafkaesque bureaucracy whose aim is to govern the forest below. The other is the Forest, a place of fear, weird creatures, primitive people, and violence. Peretz, who works at the Administration, wants to visit the Forest. Candide crashed in the Forest years ago and wants to...

Ten years after the divorce of her parents, the daughter meets her trucker father and travels with him through central Russia and the southern regions. The Steppe is a new novel by Oksana Vasyakina, which is a dialogue with her debut novel Wound: the first book is about a daughter's farewell to her dead mother; the second is about the relationship with the father. Returning her thoughts to the...

Three friends must urgently find the fourth, who disappeared in an unknown direction, and inform him about the suicide of his stepfather. Sasha Carburetor must make it to the funeral...

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

In its opening paragraphs, a successful journalist and Holocaust survivor steps off a New York City curb and into the path of an oncoming taxi. Consequently, most of Wiesel's masterful portrayal of one man's exploration of the historical tragedy that befell him, his family, and his people transpires in the thoughts, daydreams, and memories of the novel's narrator. Torn between choosing life or...