Drei Freunde wollen vor dem Studium für ein Jahr in einem Industriebetrieb arbeiten, in einer für sie fremden, aufregenden Welt. Ein bisschen Trotz ist dabei im Spiel, viel Idealismus und noch mehr Abenteuerlust. Wie schwierig es werden wird, sich zu behaupten, ahnen sie anfangs nicht. Und dann reagiert jeder von ihnen anders auf die neue Situation: Nikolaus handelt zielstrebig, Recha ist...

Sergei Zhadan was one of the few who grasped our era like a tiger by the tail, saw the funny in its sorrows and the tragic in its joys, described its uniqueness. 'Time moves under your skin,' says Zhadan, 'and if you have thin skin, you can even see it.' And so the managers gather after a hard day at the bar, fat, heavy and inactive middle managers, hustle in the bar like seals, beat with...

From the flamboyant and unpredictable Maryska, who scandalises the town when she cuts short her golden tresses, to the eccentric Uncle Pepin, who always has to have a ready supply of furniture to smash when he's angry, Bohumil Hrabal creates a range of enchanting and memorable characters - confirming his status as one of Europe's greatest writers.

Wie alle Hauptwerke Hermann Hesses hat auch der Demian, den der damals 40jährige Autor mitten im Ersten Weltkrieg schrieb, eine ebenso ungewöhnliche wie spannende Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichte. Daß dieses im Herbst 1917 vollendete Buch erst im Juni 1919, ein halbes Jahr nach Kriegsende, veröffentlicht wurde, lag an der Unbekanntheit des Verfassers. Denn Hesse hatte das Manuskript dem...

»Harry Haller ist in das kulturlose und unmenschliche Inferno unserer prunkenden und lärmenden Gegenwart vorgedrungen und steht mit seinem Begriff von Menschenwert… einsam außerhalb der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Seine Sehnsucht kennt eine unerreichbare Wirklichkeit: seine Verzweiflung treibt ihn zuweilen in die erreichbare andere zurück. Lust und Enttäuschung ihres Daseins führen in seinem...

The Gadfly is set in 1840s Italy, at a time when the country was chafing under Austrian rule. The titular character is a charming, witty writer of pointed political satires who finds himself running with a crowd of revolutionaries. The plot develops as the revolutionaries struggle against the government and as the Gadfly struggles with a mysterious hatred of the Church, and of a certain...

What will be the fate of the paper book in the world of smart fleas and holograms, viviparous fur and goldfish, after the New Middle Ages and the Second Islamic Revolution? In the novel 'Manaraga' Vladimir Sorokin sets an unexpected vector for thinking about the relationship of humanity with the printed word. The unusual profession of the protagonist - an underground worker, a romantic, a...

The novel's heroes, Aristarchus and Nadezhda, were destined for each other and possessed a rare talent of love that not everyone has. Not everyone can withstand such love. Their lives were shaken, twisted and lifted to the crest of the ninth wave. Modern Orpheus and Eurydice had to enter into a duel with fate. They did not have the chance to live together, but death united them.

Job is the tale of Mendel Singer, a pious Eastern-European Jew who teaches the Torah to children, and whose faith is tested at every turn. His youngest son seems to be incurably disabled, one of his older sons joins the Russian Army, the other deserts to America, and his daughter is running around with a Cossack. When he flees with his wife and daughter, further blows of fate await him . ....

Here cattlemen steal geese, drink port on the roof of the Kazan Cathedral, Soviet citizens hunt for shortages and mock the leaders; here the romantic builders of the Great Empire love, believe and cheat, and the golden Brezhnev era becomes clearer in the haze like a beautiful and nostalgic picaresque novel.

'Legends of Arbat' is a collection of incredibly funny and dizzying stories from the Soviet and recent past. Ruthless truth and folk mythology form a brilliant alloy and explosive mixture.

Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. This first novel in the series follows Lila...