The writer Felix Hartlaub died in obscurity at just 31, vanishing from Berlin in 1945. He left behind a small oeuvre of private writings from the Second World War: fragments and observations of life from the midst of catastrophe that, with their evocative power and precision, would make a permanent place for him in German letters. Posted to Paris in 1940 to conduct archival research, Hartlaub...

A remarkable two-book volume: Diary of A Hunger Striker, the first-hand account of celebrated Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, jailed unfairly as a political prisoner, during his 145-day-long hunger strike in a Russian prison; and Four and a Half Steps, his newest collection of short stories. Sentsov’s prison diary begins three days into his indefinite hunger strike, as he calls for the...

Family and nation formed a reliable bedrock of security for precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi. She was a Young Pioneer, helping to lead her country toward the future of perfect freedom promised by the leaders of her country, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania. Then, almost overnight, the Berlin Wall fell and the pillars of her society toppled. The local statue of Stalin, whom she had...

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, novelist and journalist Andrey Kurkov was forced to flee his hometown of Kyiv. This journal is a harrowing record of the months leading up to and after the invasion, as Kurkov and his family migrate to western Ukraine for shelter. Surrounded by others fleeing violence, he pens incisive dispatches on the latest border conflicts and bombardments, and...

The young artist and writer Yevgenia Belorusets was in her hometown of Kyiv when Putin’s ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine began on the morning of February 24, 2022. With the shelling of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and Kherson, the war with Russia had clearly, irreversibly begun: ‘I thought, this has been allowed to happen, it is a crime against everything human, against a great common...

Leonid Andreyev’s work continues to spark debate among critics. For some, his writings represent ‘exemplary depravity’; others discern in them ‘a powerful breath of talent.’ But what was the writer truly like—a cold cynic or a sensitive, vulnerable soul? Why, despite being a patriot, did he reject the Revolution? Why did he attempt suicide? The answers lie in this new biography.

Foreigners gathered under this cover. Some by passport, some by spirit, and some simply too flamboyant for this world. Meryl Streep and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alla Pugacheva and Jean Cocteau, Vera Polozkova and Greta Garbo. And also Audrey Hepburn, Margarita Terekhova, Andrey Danilko, Renata Litvinova... They have one thing in common: they are ‘different,’ they ‘didn't fit in’—and so they...

Before emigrating, she participated in saving the Solzhenitsyn Archive after his arrest, miraculously escaping repression herself. In exile, she worked for the renowned Ardis publishing house and was a BBC journalist during its golden age. In perestroika-era Moscow, she witnessed and participated in the era of free speech... Masha Slonim's long-awaited memoir is a spy thriller, a dramatic...

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is someone who knows how to work with chaos. She's known it since her hungry childhood during the war. Today, the girl who sang in the courtyards of Kuibyshev for bread is a celebrated writer, and people call her ‘great.’ But today, Petrushevskaya says, ‘There Is No Time.’ That's the title she gave to her book, which she's long wanted to compile from the texts of an...

The gritty memoir of a former US Marine and Presidential Guard, who, after being unjustly held and abused in a Russian gulag for three years and freed in a high-profile prisoner exchange, seeks revenge against his former Russian captors by volunteering to fight in Ukraine.

‘Man has a need for something immense – for infinity and wonder – and he is right not to be content with less and not to feel at home in the world until this need is satisfied,’ – perhaps this phrase from one of Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo, more than any other, reveals the essence of the great artist's soul, forever wandering along the path of searching for perfection....

His feelings for the Czech journalist Milena Jesenská became the most vivid experience in the life of the ‘Prague genius.’ Their romance didn't last long, but their correspondence continued for several years. It was to Milena that the writer entrusted his diaries and the later famous ‘Letter to his Father,’ and their complex, emotional relationship was reflected in Kafka's main work – the...