Coming from a provincial working-class family, Platonov wholeheartedly accepted the October Revolution, and the more interesting is the fact that his works convey with unprecedented force a personal ideological tragedy, unusually clearly expressed in ‘The Pit.’ The very idea of building a ‘Common Proletarian House’ turns ‘The Pit’ into a dystopia that is shocking in its power, where the details...

Bored already? Then read this book! It: - is not a play in verse, but a play in verse and comics (which is a devilish difference); - clarifies the subtleties and nuances of a bygone culture - for example, why the play was considered scandalous (how could a young man stay in a girl's room until the morning?!); - tells about the life, everyday life and customs of the high Moscow society of the...

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...

At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization they can do anything they want. Anything. But as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far removed from...

The theme of Hrabal's famous prose is the life of Jan Dítet, a waiter, later a hotelier and finally a traveler during a time of political upheaval. It is a book about Czechness, the greatness and ugliness within us, which was made into a film by Jirí Menzel in 2006.

A worker at a waste paper collection center, Hanta, has worked at a printing press for thirty-five years. He rescues rare books from piles of paper, reads them, and is thus ''educated against his will.'' The novella Too Noisy Solitude is Hanta’s inner monologue with many recurring motifs. The reader gets to know Hanta’s first love, Mancinka, and the gypsy Ilonka, who disappeared in a...

The Good Soldier Švejk is one of the most famous and popular characters not only in Czech but also in world literature. This is evidenced by the fact that, along with numerous editions at home and abroad, the work has become a classic in the true sense of the word, which is constantly read and quoted. Perhaps we could also talk about a part of our national character, whether in a good or...

The War with the Newts develops over a long period of time as a collage of newspaper clippings and other brilliantly parodied records about the miraculous Newts who learn to speak, work, and behave like humans, only lacking the ability to think creatively. Behind the seemingly entertaining and witty satire on newspaper sensationalism, what Capek considered the greatest danger to human...

Capek's novel Krakatit is based on a similar invention to the one described by the author in The Absolute Factory. The inventor Prokop discovers a way to let any substance disintegrate into atoms. The explosion releases a huge amount of energy. He produces a substance called krakatit - the most terrible explosive in the world, which can be detonated remotely using electromagnetic waves. Prokop...

For the first time in the last hundred years, the prose of Hryhoriy Kvitka-Osnovyanenko returns to readers as it really was. With its own rhythm and special Slobozhan dialect. Vengeful witches, the dead who celebrate Easter, enchanted treasures, a tumbleweed - a witness against a murderer... Before us appears a vivid and mystical picture of life in Ukrainian lands from Konotop to Kharkiv....

'Women's' texts by a man... Is this even possible? The unexpected and non-chronicle Franko convincingly proves that it is. Sexual slavery, prostitution and human trafficking, war and post-traumatic syndrome, the theory and practice of lies and the pickup technique, the crisis of traditional marriage and patriarchal morality, criminal crimes and investigation, mobbing and suicide - all this is...

Valerian Pidmohylnyi wanted to write a novel in which the ship's master would be a woman. And he wrote 'A Little Drama' - a novel about new relationships, a new way of life, a new morality and eternal questions that arise in the unexpected surprises of the age of technological progress. Crazy irrational passion or cold rational calculation - who will emerge victorious from the duel? Is victory...