Hapless cosmonaut Ijon Tichy has been sent back to earth to attend the Eighth Futurological Congress in smog-bound, overpopulated Costa Rica, holed up with an assortment of scientists in a luxury hotel (fully equipped with tear gas sprinklers in case things get out of hand). But when an unfortunate incident occurs involving a revolution and hallucinogenic drugs in the water supply, Tichy finds...

One of the world's most beloved science fiction writers, Stanislaw Lem was famed for his wryly comic, outlandish imaginings of the relationship between humans and technology. In this playful cosmic fantasia, two 'constructors' compete to dream up ever-more ingenious inventions in a universe beyond reality.

In Pilot Pirx, Lem has created an irresistibly likable character: an astronaut who gives the impression of still navigating by the seat of his pants-a bumbler but an inspired one. By investing Pirx with a range of human foibles, Lem offers a wonderful vision of the audacity, childlike curiosity, and intuition that can give humans the courage to confront outer space.

Written as the memoir of a mathematician who participates in the government project (code name: His Master’s Voice) attempting to decode what seems to be a message from outer space, this classic novel shows scientists grappling with fundamental questions about the nature of reality, the confines of knowledge, the limitations of the human mind, and the ethics of military-sponsored scientific...

With the cold calculation of a surgeon, the inquisitiveness of a discoverer and the imagination of an artist, Vladimir Sorokin dissects reality, bringing to light the main contradictions and philosophical dilemmas of modern society. How do new myths appear and old ones change, what influence does classical literature and, more broadly, culture have on our lives, where are the boundaries between...

The new novel by Vladimir Sorokin is a look at the future of Europe, which, despite the dramatic changes in the world and human structure, seems very understandable and real. The recognizable and the unrecognizable coexist peacefully on the bright tapestry of the New Middle Ages, populated by dog-heads and centaurs, small people and giants, crusaders and Orthodox communists. Infinitely...

Comrades, who is the last? A cult novel by one of the brightest and most scandalous contemporary writers. People of different social classes, different political views, different beliefs and preferences will meet in a multi-kilometer queue. Vladimir Sorokin's novel 'The Queue' has something that is characteristic of all the great works of world literature: over time, it not only did not lose...

The collection ‘Monoclone’ includes twelve stories, complex and multifaceted, like life itself: in them truth is intertwined with fiction, pornographic with lyrical, realistic with absurdist, sincere with shocking. Sorokin's stories, like his great prose, are truly polyphonic: his characters are living people, endowed with their own voice and subconscious, into the study of the depths of which...

The collection includes stories and short stories by Tolstoy's late works (1885-1903): ‘Kholstomer’, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’, ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, ‘After the Ball’, ‘Notes of a Madman’, ‘Master and Worker’, ‘Father Sergius’.

The best authors writing in Russian: Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Dina Rubina, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Marina Stepnova, Narine Abgaryan, Yana Wagner, Tatyana Zamirovskaya, Sergey Lukyanenko, Eduard Ovechkin, Alexander Tsypkin and other contemporary writers - provided their stories for publication in this ‘This truly unique book brings together stories from our Foundation's wards, along with stories...