It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five years in a coke processing plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that governed the labor colony: one shovel load of coal is worth one gram of bread.

‘Beyond Pain’ is an autobiographical novel by Osip Turyanskyi, in which he depicted the terrible experience of captivity during the First World War. Sixty thousand Austrian prisoners ended up in the hands of the Serbs, and they, retreating to the west, chased them by stage through the mountains into Albania. In the end, forty-five thousand prisoners died from cold and disease.

‘After the 24th’ is a collection of short stories and rhythmic prose about the war, a record of what we have experienced and are experiencing now. About those who are ready to die for freedom and those who are ready to survive at any cost, about lovers and lovers, about losses so bitter that you want to howl in pain, and about laughter that keeps you healthy.

Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. Billy Pilgrim’s journey is at once a farcical look at the horror and tragedy of war where children are placed on the frontlines and die (so it goes), and a moving examination of what it means to be fallibly...

'There are Russian fairy tales where the hero, some kind of Ivan the Fool, stops at the crossroads of three roads. One is to the right, the other is to the left, the third is straight. If you go to the right, you will find death, if you go to the left, you will meet love, and if you go straight, the kingdom with chests full of gold. Plus a golden toilet. What to choose: death, love or wealth?...

Daniel leads a rich life in the university town of Athens, Georgia. He’s got a couple close friends, a steady paycheck working for a regional airline, and of course, for a few glorious days each Fall, college football tailgates. He considers himself to be a mostly lucky guy-despite the fact that he’s suffered from a debilitating disease since he was a small child, one that has left him unable...

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...

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...

Maxim Osipov, who lives and practices medicine in a town ninety miles outside Moscow, is one of Russia's best-regarded writers. In the tradition of Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams, he draws on his experiences in medicine to craft stories of great subtlety and striking insight. Rich in comparison but devoid of cheap sentiment, Osipov's fiction presents a nuanced, collage-like portrait...

France, 1685. The Sun King establishes Catholicism as the only legal religion. Huguenot groups cross the country to reach the north, where they hope to find a new homeland

A literary, imaginative ode to the borderland, not only geographical, physical, but in the broadest sense of the word... One of the most famous and most widely commented novels by Olga Tokarczuk.