After a brutal attack, Polina can't leave her home—fear and trauma have turned her life into a prison. Her only support in life is her husband, Vlad, who saved her that day and now surrounds her with care and love. But one day, Polina's friend is found murdered: the perpetrator's signature matches her own attack down to the last detail. Vlad urges Polina to remain silent, so as not to attract...

The Mighty Angel concerns the alcoholic misadventures of a writer named Jerzy. Eighteen times he's woken up in rehab. Eighteen times he's been released?a sober and, more or less, healthy man?after treatment at the hands of the stern therapist Moses Alias I Alcohol. And eighteen times he's stopped off at the liquor store on the way home, to pick up the supplies that are necessary to help him...

Ostap Bender, the ‘grand strategist,’ is a con man on the make in the Soviet Union during the New Economic Policy (NEP) period. He's obsessed with getting one last big score?a few hundred thousand will do, and heading for Rio de Janeiro, where there are ‘a million and a half people, all of them wearing white pants, without exception.’ When Bender hears the story of Alexandr Koreiko, an...

After more than sixty years, The Tin Drum has, if anything, gained in power and relevance. All of Grass’s amazing evocations are still there, and still amazing: Oskar Matzerath, the indomitable drummer; his grandmother, Anna Koljaiczek; his mother, Agnes; Alfred Matzerath and Jan Bronski, his presumptive fathers; Oskar’s midget friends—Bebra, the great circus master and Roswitha Raguna, the...

Married unhappily to a prominent member of her tight-knit Russian immigrant community, vivacious Anna K. engages in a reckless affair with an outsider on whom she has pinned fleeting hopes for freedom, while in a neighboring community, Bukharian-Jewish pharmacist Lev harbors a consuming love for Anna's cousin.

In twelve ‘pristine, entrancing’ (Booklist) linked stories, Ellen Litman introduces an unforgettable cast of Russian-Jewish immigrants trying to assimilate in a new world. Tender and wryly funny, these stories trace Masha's and her fellow immigrants' struggles to find a place in a new society—lonely seniors, families grappling with unemployment and depression, and young adults searching for love.

Three generations of women battle against the tides of history, from segregated 1950s America to the fall of the USSR and the rise of revolutionary Rojava.

Tanya Kagan, a rising specialist in Russian art, is trying to entice Russia’s wealthy oligarchs to bid on the biggest sale of her career, The Order of Saint Catherine, while making sense of the sudden, unexplained departure of her husband. Suspenseful and beautifully written, The Imperial Wife asks whether we view female ambition any differently today than we did in the past.

Best friends Eva and Nika haven't seen or spoken for ten years, but now they're finally reunited—and forced to immediately go on the run. On the long journey from Rostov-on-Don to Vladivostok, they'll have to face FSB agents, gangsters, inclement weather, disease, hunger, and—most terrifying of all—their own past.

This book of short stories and miniatures by Vladimir Stepan strengthens his reputation as one of the best domestic masters of short prose. Laconic, transparent texts, in which there is not a single superfluous word, are made between artistic documentary and autofiction. At first glance, they belong to the tradition of pure realism, but upon careful reading it is easy to see that the author...

Experiencing unrequited love, the heroine of Daria Traiden's novel buys a village house in Belarus and begins renovating it. Transforming and inhabiting her own space on her native land is her strategy for preserving meaning. Reflecting on body, identity, poverty, violence, and family, the author searches for and reinvents her roots. Equally about love and home, the book explores the heartbreak...

‘Diary’ is a chronicle of the psychological breakdown of the country. The time of overturned destinies and burned-out feelings gives birth to a special literature, uncomfortable and disturbing. Here the author becomes general. Therefore, without a name, about everyone in the first person. ‘It's very difficult to write - everything is a stupor. Our current context adds to the senselessness - it...