A collection of essay-novellas by the winner of the Yasnaya Polyana Award and author of the bestseller *Drama of a Snowy Night*. Featuring literary investigations and fresh perspectives on renowned works—spanning Italy, literary hoaxes, fate and destiny, life and death. From Fyodor Tyutchev to Thomas Wolfe, and the mysteries of the Roman classics.

How long it had been since they last visited this house... Not since that very night when their youngest sister died. The circumstances of her death remained a mystery. That tragedy tore the family apart. And yet, twenty years later, the three sisters decided to spend Christmas together at a secluded cottage on the rocky coast of England. The eldest, Jess, has harbored a burning secret for...

An atmospheric drama about a heroine’s return to the heart of Karelia—a place where time flows more slowly than elsewhere, and the boundary between past, present, and future becomes blurred. – A poignant parable-novel exploring the clash between the old and the new, and the lives of those who stayed behind when everyone else left. – For admirers of contemporary social fiction set in the...

A new short story collection about women from the author of the autofiction novel *The Bay of Patience*. – A meticulous and sensitive exploration of how diverse female identity is shaped through familiar life trajectories—coming of age, the search for meaning and stability, the struggle against misogyny, separation, and motherhood.

The book is rooted in the Orthodox legend of ‘Zoya’s Standing’ in Kuibyshev; in the author’s own words, it is a philosophical novel about modern man’s rejection of the miraculous. In the provincial backwater of Grechansk, the impossible occurs. A young woman named Tatiana gathers her friends for a dance party; finding herself without a partner, she invites... Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker...

A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before....

Known as the ‘Wizard of the Kremlin,’ the enigmatic Vadim Baranov was a TV producer before becoming a political advisor to Putin, aka ‘The Czar.’ After his resignation from this position, legends about him multiply, with no one able to distinguish truth from fiction. Until one night, when he tells his story to the narrator of this book…

A dazzling debut novel about a young woman's vexed coming of age in a traditional Azerbaijani community in Russia, grappling under the weight of Muslim patriarchal norms and a debilitating neurological condition. The mysterious affliction leaves her unable to control her muscles, plagued by pain and speech disorders, defying diagnosis. Addressing each body part with the scrupulousness of a...

When Maya, a young Russian filmmaker, makes a low-budget horror movie with her friends, it seems like a promising start to a career in indie film. Little does she know that her jokey lo-fi film will soon attract the attention of the autocratic censors at the highest levels of the Russian police state. What follows is a propulsive narrative of an artist being crushed by state power, and the...

Siggi Jepsen, incarcerated as a juvenile delinquent, is one day assigned to write a routine German lesson on the ‘The Joys of Duty.’ Overfamiliar with these ‘joys,’ Siggi sets down his life since 1943, a decade earlier, when as a boy he watched his father, constable of the northernmost police station in Germany, doggedly carry out orders from Berlin to stop a well-known Expressionist, their...

'Wild Animal Tales' is a collection of fairy tales, where you can recognize each animal as a friend, neighbor, and sometimes yourself. In fantastic situations that develop around the characters of fairy tales, there is much more real, real life than it might seem at first glance. Wit, brilliant imagination, the ability to create stunning linguistic games - all these talents of Lyudmila...

Als Mira sich auf den Weg nach Südkärnten macht, steht ihr eine schwierige Aufgabe bevor: Sie muss ihre betagte Mutter auf den Auszug aus dem Haus vorbereiten, in dem sie vor Jahrzehnten mit den damals noch kleinen Kindern Obdach gefunden hat. Im Lauf der folgenden Wochen verdichten sich Miras eigene Erinnerungen an das Dorf und an eine als traumatisch erlebte Kindheit, geprägt von der rigiden...