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.

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.

Heinrich Düring, Gemeindebeamter in Fallingbostel, führt ein Doppelleben: Er verachtet das NS-Regime und den Alltag des deutschen Kleinbürgertums, nach außen aber gibt er sich angepasst. Seinen Ausgleich findet er in der Natur, durchstreift unermüdlich die geliebte Heidelandschaft, liest Wieland und Tieck. Im Wald entdeckt er eine Hütte und bezieht sie als Versteck für sich und seine...

The three novellas of Farewell, Aylis take place over decades of transition in a country that rather resembles modern-day Azerbaijan.

Martinsen demonstrates how Dostoevsky first plunges the reader into Raskolnikov’s fevered brain, creating sympathy for him, and she explains why most readers root for him to get away from the scene of the crime. Dostoevsky subsequently provides outsider perspectives on Raskolnikov’s thinking, effecting a conversion in reader sympathy. By examining the multiple justifications for murder...

Oliver is eleven years old, and he chose his own name after a favorite Dickens character. He loves playing Snake on his phone and eating food ‘like they do in America’; he dreams of defeating the bully Tsapa, being cured of HIV, and finding a real family. But just as his prospective mom and dad arrive from Salt Lake City, TV reports begin predicting the imminent end of the world. Fiction writer...

Gilles de Rais—a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc and a Marshal of France—was also a bloodthirsty serial killer. The Roman Emperor Tiberius—a contemporary of Jesus Christ—was one of history's most notorious libertines. What connection do they have to Epstein’s island? What is reincarnation, really? Are we responsible for actions committed in past lives? Was it truly *us*? Who was Jeffrey...

A multitude of different personalities dwell within each of us, yet a rational mind suppresses any attempt they might make to assert their independence. Rosa, the protagonist of Tatyana Shcherbina’s novel, spent many years in a lethargic sleep; it is hardly surprising, then, that she slips back and forth between classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the final years of the USSR. Yet the...