Glas: 26 books

We are all in some sense captives in today's world: captives of a political system, of circumstances, of our obligations or our illusions, to say nothing of those who are captives in a literal sense. The world seems to be full of misplaced people trapped in captivity of one kind or another, sometimes...

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of free speech (and publishing), Russian women have become a force in the world of letters. Where in the past they were known chiefly as literary widows or devoted wives, occasionally as poets or critics, and only very rarely as novelists, today they...

It used to be so easy. To be a good dad was to be a good breadwinner, to be a good mom was to be a good caregiver. Fathers ruled at work, mothers ruled at home. Today, we have a choice. Mothers can also be breadwinners, and fathers can also be caregivers. Yet, fathers still rule at work, and mothers...

How was it possible that an entire country could live in mute fear? Why did Soviet intellectuals denounce on another an conspire with the authorities to brainwash ordinary people? Why did Soviet submarines sink and nuclear power stations explode? This collection answers to some extent, the questions...

The living, astonishing voices of eleven leading Russian authors: Boris Akunin, Evgeny Grishkovets, Eduard Limonov, Yuri Mamleev, Viktor Pelevin, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, Nina Sadur, Mikhail Shishkin, Vladimir Sorokin, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Ludmila Ulitskaya. The writers interviewed for this book represent...

Two short novels by major 20th-century Russian authors. The Old Arbat by Boris Yampolsky examines the inner state of a hunted man, his fears and his loneliness as he wanders around Moscow trying to escape the shadowing KGB. Unlike Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, however, Yampolsky’s hero is innocent....

This book by and about Russian hitchhikers will take the reader along the endless roads of Siberia, the Urals, the Altai, Central Russia and beyond. Included are Irina Bogatyreva’s short novel Hitchhiking, Igor Savelyev’s Pale City, and Tatiana Mazepina’s Journey towards Paradise – all winners...

Sense showcases a young, courageous author from Chechnya writing in the best traditions of Tolstoy and Turgenev. Of interest to the English-speaking reader is his intimate vision of a confused adolescent in a threatening and dangerous world. Arslan Khasavov shows the limits to which an indifferent, hypocritical society can push an idealistic, romantically-minded, well-meaning young person.

Nominated for the Russian Booker Prize and Russia's National Bestseller Prize, and a bestseller on Russia’s equivalent of Amazon for a year. Fyodor is a successful young architect, but far from the ideal father. He’s constantly embarrassed by his 14 year-old son, Vanya, born with Down’s Syndrome,...

Celebrating the 10th year of Russia’s Debut Prize for young writers. In the early 1990s the Booker Prize, brought to Russia from Britain, gave new impetus to the Russian novel. A decade later came the Debut Prize for young authors, now celebrating its tenth year. The authors in this prose anthology...

Recently unearthed in the archives of the NKVD, Nina Lugovskaya's diary provides a rare window into the daily routines of an educated Moscow family during the 1930s when fear of arrest was a fact of life. Nina's father, a leader of the Left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries, had embraced Lenin's New...

Like the other young men on the island, Cicerello wants to attend the three royal dances when the Princess will choose a husband. But his stepmother would not let him go. With wit and wisdom, and the little help from his friends, Cicerello manages to attend the first dance and catch the Princess'...

Russia's answer to Deborah Moggach’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Before I Croak is a comic novel from one of Russia’s most outstanding young novelists. Five middle-class women in their sixties arrive at a care home in suburban Moscow, keen to experience their ‘second youth’. One of them...

In this new collection, six Russian women take a sober view of the modern world after two decades of social upheaval. The authors featured in Still Waters Run Deep are Yaroslava Pulinovich, Olga Rimsha, Irina Bogatereva, Ksenia Zhukova, Anna Lavrinenko and Anna Leonidova. All in their 20s or 30s,...