In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop.

Motanka is a collection of short fiction by Ukrainian writers about women's experiences of war and the incredible powers that manifest themselves in special circumstances. Fantasy, magical realism, steampunk, and even post-apocalypse; events that take place both in ancient times and in the days of modern war, in recognizable worlds or completely fantastic reality. These are twelve stories about...

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

Varya dreams of becoming a chef, creating and reaching a new level. Her mother tells her that she can simply get married - to a guy from their town. But Varya is so tired of proving something to people who don't understand her that she decides: it's time to find her own taste of freedom. The girl goes to Lviv with the intention of conquering the peaks of restaurant cuisine. However, achieving...

On February 24, 2022, Ukrainian Zhenya Berezhnaya woke up to a call from her family in Kharkov: the war had begun. Her usual life in her beloved Kyiv, where Zhenya wrote fairy tales for adults, taught, and hosted a podcast about literature, was over. Sirens and spending the night in basements, evacuation, refugee status, the loss of a loved one, attempts to reassemble herself in a new country -...

July 2014, Donbass. A student named Zhanna returns to her native mining village from Kharkov to look after her dying mother. At the same time, their young neighbor nicknamed Valet and an elderly secret service officer named Korol arrive from Moscow - both on assignment from the Russian military command. Something terrible and irreparable is about to happen. But this is not the first time that...

'Pets' by Zhenya Berkovich is a prison fairy tale; everything told in it is the pure truth, but all the characters are fictitious and the coincidences are accidental. The action takes place in Tyurmyau, where cats, rats, dogs, cockroaches, a crow and, of course, people have to get along, but this is not a story about people. The main character, Volny Kotan, goes through a series of tests to...

In The Door, in Iza’s Ballad, and in Abigail, Magda Szabó describes the complex relationships between women of different ages and backgrounds with an astute and unsparing eye. Eszter, the narrator and protagonist of The Fawn, may well be Szabó’s most fascinating creation.

Jonas Heidbrink, ein Erfolgsmensch. Schon vor dem dreißigsten hat er sein Start-up versilbert; arbeiten muss er sein Leben lang nicht mehr. Aber es geht Heidbrink nicht gut, überhaupt nicht. Und so fährt er eines kalten Januartages los Richtung Osten, in die mecklenburgische Einöde, wo inmitten von Sümpfen ein schlossartiger Bau emporragt: das Sanatorium.

Gerrit Kouwenaars Novelle erzählt die Geschichte des Jugendlichen Karel im Mai 1940 während des Überfalls der Deutschen auf die Niederlande. «Fall, Bombe, fall» ist ein wiederentdeckter Klassiker und zugleich eine erschreckend aktuelle Erzählung darüber, wie der Krieg jungen Menschen ihre Jugend stiehlt.

Die Fähre braucht vom Festland eine Stunde auf die kleine Nordseeinsel, manchmal länger, je nach Wellengang. Hier lebt in einem der zwei Dörfer seit fast 300 Jahren die Familie Sander. Drei Kinder hat Hanne großgezogen, ihr Mann hat die Familie und die Seefahrt aufgegeben. Nun hat ihr Ältester sein Kapitänspatent verloren, ist gequält von Ahnungen und Flutstatistiken und wartet auf den...

Jedes Jahr, wenn der Herbst naht, wird Annett von einer inneren Unruhe erfasst. Dann macht sich die Narbe an ihrem Arm bemerkbar, dann werden die Erinnerungen an den Sommer 1988 und an die Clique von damals wach. Fünf Freunde, die sich blind vertrauten, bis einer von ihnen zum Verräter wurde.