Glagoslav Publications - Catalogue 2012 by Glagoslav Publications

CATALOGUE 2012

Glagoslav Publications is an independent British-Dutch publishing company specializing in the production and worldwide distribution of the English and Dutch language translations of fiction and non-fiction titles by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian authors. Expertise in Slavic and European languages and literature, extensive experience in international publishing, and a deep appreciation of the histories and cultures of both Western and Eastern Europe enable us to offer English-speaking readers throughout the world and Dutch readers in The Netherlands and Belgium access to important works that deserve an audience beyond their native lands. We seek out books from Slavic countries that represent an important part of our common cultural, literary, and intellectual heritage and that promote a better understanding of this intriguing but often misunderstood part of the Eurasian continent. The primary focus of Glagoslav Publications is to bring out translations that embody values that are uniquely Slavic in nature. Every book that we publish has already achieved an engaged readership in its native land, has been recognized by international critics, and, in many cases, has either received or been short-listed for prestigious national and international awards. Currently Glagoslav Publications is preparing to launch an entire series of previously untranslated fiction and non-fiction titles and to republish translations that deserve the attention of international readers with an interest in Eastern Europe. In the near future it will be possible to easily purchase our first print and e-book titles across the globe. Thanks to advances in the art of publishing and distribution, high-quality print editions will be available for low-cost, fast delivery not only through our website and other internet vendors, but also through most local bookstores in the United States, Canada, UK, The Netherlands, Belgium and other EU Countries, Australia, New Zealand and throughout the world.

Elena Chizhova

The Time Of Women Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-21-0 (UK) ISBN 978-9-081823-90-6 (NL) Format: 203mm x 127mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 31st Junuary 2012 The Russian Booker Prize The Time of Women tells the story of three old women raising a small mute girl, Suzanna, in a communal apartment in the Soviet Union of the 1960s. Memories of hardship in the first cataclysmic half of the century, as well as the loss of their own children, have receded into the background of everyday worries. If the authorities find out Suzanna’s disability she will be taken from her home and sent to an institution. When her mother, Antonina, falls desperately ill, the grannies are faced with the reality of losing the little girl they love – unless a stepfather can be found before it is too late. And for that, they need a miracle. The novel translated by Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas, edited by Nina Chordas. “It is an earthbound and frankly emotional novel, especially in a literary scene long dominated by the cerebral trickery of postmodernism.” THE NEW YORK TIMES “Most of these stalwart devotees are women, which is another major sign of the times. One of the most popular novels to be published in the past two years bore the symbolic title The Time of Women, and its author, the St Petersburg university professor Elena Chizhova, was catapulted to fame by winning the Russian Booker prize in 2009”. THE TELEGRAPH “Yet like other contemporary Russian texts - Viktor Pelevin's works come to mind — The Time of Women constantly references political events, but is far from a political novel. The regime is oppressive, but so is life itself. Antonina is an abandoned single mother who gets sick with cancer; Suzanna is mute; the grandmothers are old and unwell. One of the primary questions the book addresses is how it is possible to resist oppression in any form and at the same time retain one's humanity. Chizhova's novel suggests that such resistance is possible”. LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

www.books.glagoslav.com/the-time-of-women 2

Zakhar Prilepin

Sin

Novel ISBN 978-1-909156-25-8 (UK) ISBN 978-9-081823-93-7 (NL) Format: 203mm x 127mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 1st April 2012 The National Bestseller Prize and the Super Natsbest Prize Zakhar Prilepin’s novel-in-stories, Sin, has become a literary phenomenon in Russia, where it was published in 2007. The novel has been hailed as the epitome of the spirit of the opening decade of the 21st century, and was called “the book of the decade” by the prestigious Super Natsbest Award jury. Sin offers a fascinating glimpse into the recent Russian past, as well as its present, with its unemployment, poverty, violence, and local wars – social problems that may be found in many corners of the world. Zakhar Prilepin presents these realities through the eyes of Zakharka, taking us along on the life-affirming journey of his unforgettable protagonist. The novel translated by Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas, Edited by Nina Chordas. “is book gives you the impulse to live your life to the fullest without shallow hesitations.” DMITRY BYKOV, famous Russian writer and journalist. “And he (Prilepin) is probably the most important writer in modern Russia, a sensitive and intelligent critic of his country’s condition. To understand Russia today, you need to understand Prilepin — first and foremost because he doesn’t fit into the preconceptions most outsiders have about the place. <…> Prilepin is an intensely male writer—like Ernest Hemingway, he’s intoxicated with the rituals and bonds of maleness, and, by extension, war, which he sees as the ultimate test of manhood.” Russia’s Young Hemingway/ NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE “It is an intensely human story that takes you to a different place that, at the same time, feels familiar.” ALAN CARUBA

www.books.glagoslav.com/sin

Maria Matios

Hardly Ever Otherwise Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-34-0 (UK) ISBN 978-9-491425-12-7 (NL) Format: 203mm x 127mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback The Book of the Year 2007 The Grand Prix at “Coronation of the Word” 2007 Everything eventually reaches its appointed place in time and space. Maria Matios’s dramatic family saga, Hardly Ever Otherwise, narrates the story of several western Ukrainian families during the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and expands upon the idea that “it isn’t time that is important, but the human condition in time.” In Matios’s multi-tiered plot, the grand passions of ordinary people are illuminated under the caliginous light of an ethereal mysticism. Digressions on love, envy, transgression, together with atonement are woven into the story. The reader is submerged into a rich world populated by a grand cast of characters and ideas, which Matios animates with her prolific imagination and subtle wisdom. Each character in this outstanding drama has an irrefutable alibi, a unique truth, and a private conflict with honor and duty. Her characters do not always act in accordance with logic and law books, as the laws of honor clash with the laws of the heart. And this is why it is hardly ever otherwise.

The novel translated by Yury Tkach. “Matios’s writing style is rich and complex, yet still quite accessible to the Ukrainian reader. Instead of reacting against rural stereotypes, Matios revels in the unique individuality of her ancestral villagers and shows the humanity and psychological depth that can be found in their lives.” Michael M.Naydan/WORLD LITERATURE TODAY “I strongly believe that the fact of M.Matios appearing on the Ukrainian literary scene brings with it important messages that allow for the fundamental laws of the last century’s literary tradition to resurface. Having formed and gained strength far beyond the literary horizon of Ukraine or Russia, these laws now make themselves known here.” NEW WORLD MAGAZINE www.books.glagoslav.com/hardly-ever-otherwise

Irene Rozdobudko

The Lost Button Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-04-3 Format: 216mm x 140mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback The Coronation of the Word Prize 2005

The taut psychological thriller The Lost Button keeps the reader transfixed. It received first place in the Coronation of the Word competition in 2005 and subsequently was made into a feature film. The novel tells the story of young student scriptwriter’s encounter with a mysterious, femme fatale actress named Liza at a vacation resort in the Carpathian Mountains in Soviet Ukraine in the 1970s. Unable to let go of his love after getting lost with her in the woods for one beautiful night, the young man’s fascination with the actress turns into an obsessions that changes his life dramatically. Great happiness or great tragedy can begin from the smallest detail, from a button, that is so easy to lose, but for which you can search your entire life. The Lost Button, a drama that ranges in geography from Central Europe to the United States of America, is a novel about love, devotion, and betrayal. It is about not looking back, but always valuing what you have - today and forever. The novel translated by Michael M. Naydan and Olha Tytarenko. “It is the contribution of Irene Rozdobudko that made Ukrainian capable of surviving; it is she who writes texts that regain readers lost at the beginning of the 1990s.” Tymofiy Havryliv/EUROZINE “This book is remarkable for what it has to say about love. It encompasses the way we love as humans, selfishly and selflessly, and in so doing make the object of our affection an idol. Or, a ghost of who they really are.” DOLCE BELEZZA, literary blog

Ales Adamovich

Khatyn

Historical novel ISBN 978-1-909156-21-0 (UK) ISBN 978-1-909156-07-4 (NL) Format: 203mm x 127mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 1st May 2012 The Yakub Kolas Belorussian State Prize The Ministry of Defence Prize The first edition of Khatyn was censored and the reader outside USSR never saw the original. Forty years later Glagoslav Publications releases the unaltered version of the novel as was the author’s intent. Based on previously sealed war archives and rare witness records of the survivors, Khatyn is a heart wrenching story of the people who fought for their lives under the Nazi occupation during World War II. Through the prism of the retrospect perception as narrated by the novel’s main character Flyora – a boy who matures during the war – author Ales Adamovich beholds genocide and horrific crimes against humanity. The former teen partisan goes back in time and remembers atrocities of 1943. The novel’s pages become the stage where perished people come to life for one last time, get to say their last word, all at the backdrop of blood chilling cries of women and children being burned alive by a Nazi death squad that, accompanied by the Vlasov’s unit, surges a Belorussian village. Today the book is part of Belorussian cultural heritage and its actuality is even more so apparent - having marked the zones of fire on the world map, the on-going blood baths have scarred the surface of our planet, begging mankind to “never again’’. The novel translated by Glenys Kozlov, Frances Longman, Sharon McKee, Edited by Camilla Stein. “Adamovich is definitely a humanist. His work is not meant solely to depress or enrage us. True, we must never forget the horrors of our past, and we must be on constant guard against forces that would create new horrors (the latter point is emphasized in the novel by the Boky discussions). But in so doing we must live on as humans ourselves.” LOGOMORPHOSES BLOG www.books.glagoslav.com/khatyn

Dmitry Glukhovsky

METRO 2033 (Dutch) Science fiction thriller

ISBN 978-9-491425-00-4 Format: 230mm x 160mm Paperback, €26.15 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €15.70 Publication date: 9th June 2012 EUROCON Encouragement Award of the European Science Fiction Society 2007 and the Bestseller of the Year 2008 (Time Out Moscow) The year is 2033. The civilized world has been destroyed and the human race is almost extinct. Cities have been reduced to rubble and rendered uninhabitable by radiation. It is now twenty years since the catastrophe occurred and stewardship of the earth has already passed from man to new life-forms – creatures that have mutated in response to the radiation and are better adapted to the new world than humans. The age of man is at an end. - More than 1.000.000 readers of the internet edition - 500.000 copies sold in Russia - EUROCON Encouragement Award of the European Science Fiction Society 2007 for the most promising debut of the year - Bestseller of the Year 2008 (Time Out Moscow) - 2010 spring, world release of the computer game by THQ based on the novel - more than 1.000.000 copies sold.

Translated by Paul van der Woerd, edited by Els de Roon Hertoge . “By superimposing a horror story onto the map of Moscow’s metro, Glukhovsky created a rather gripping combination. Metro 2033 would make perfect material for a sci-fi movie.” THE MOSCOW TIMES “Dmitry Glukhovsky used a trademark pattern to create a bestseller. Mosters, mutants, marauders stalking a land contaminated by radiation, while survivors of a nuclear war hide in the tunnels of Moscow Subway... Incredible and fantastic as it seems, once you start reading it, it is simply impossible to stop...” TIME OUT www.metro2033.nl

Eduard Kochergin

Christened With Crosses Biographical novel ISBN 978-1-909156-13-5 Format: 203mm x 127mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback

Publication date: 26th July 2012 The National Bestseller Prize 2010

Orphaned when his parents are taken away as “enemies of the people”, young Stepanych finds himself a ward of the Soviet state. He is miraculously rescued from a government orphanage in Nazi-besieged Leningrad, only to be placed in another children’s institution in Siberia - a place of Dickensian attributes, where the leaders earn nicknames like Toad and Screwface, and where the young inmates are able to live their own lives only in secret, by night. Desperately longing for his native city and his Polish mother, Bronya, Stepanych flees the orphanage soon after the end of World War II. This prizewinning memoir is the unforgettable story of a young boy’s dangerous, adventure-filled westbound journey along the railways of postwar Russia. Whether befriending a blind runaway, falling in with a gang of train burglars, witnessing an ancient beer-brewing ritual in a northern Russian village, learning the craft of firebuilding from a Siberian hashish smuggler, or mastering the art of tattooing from a former Japanese War prisoner, Stepanych exhibits the resourcefulness and inner strength that allow him to triumph over peril and hardship. Most of all, this future artist hones the observant eye that will later enable him to vividly recount for his readers the several years of his long, obstacle-filled journey home. The novel translated by Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas, edited by Nina Chordas.

www.books.glagoslav.com/christened-with-crosses

Igor Sakhnovsky

The Vital Needs Of The Dead Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-17-3 Format: 203mm x 127mm Paperback, €19.35 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 25th August 2012 The Fellowship by the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers (UK) The Vital Needs of the Dead is a tender coming-of-age story set in the provinces of the Soviet Union during the second half of the 20th century. At the center of this story, praised by Russian critics for its blend of realism and lyrical sensibility, lies the relationship of young Gosha Sidelnikov with his alluring and mysterious grandmother Rosa, who becomes his caregiver when he is virtually abandoned by his busy and distant parents. This relationship colors Sidelnikov’s subsequent forays into first love and sexual awakening. Even after her death, memories of Rosa accompany him into his adventures and misadventures as a provincial student. Then, one miserably cold winter night, her voice commands him to immediately depart for a place he’s never been before, precipitating a mysterious chain of events. The novel translated by Julia Kent, edited by Nina Chordas. “Igor Sakhnovsky’s novel is a joyful find for anyone who knows the price of seemingly insignificant details in life, for anyone who understands that the most important events go unregistered, if only picked up by one’s side vision, by a lonely existence of a lonely person. This isn’t a literary method or a mental determination. In fact, this is the way the writer’s perception is.” LYUDMILA ULITSKAYA, famous Russian writer. “Sakhnovsky’s writing gives out an impression that there’s nothing more scary, beautiful and fantastic than the so called real life. The sub-title of this work of prose says ‘chronicles’. Not fiction, but real circumstances of one’s own life that Sakhnovsky learned to feel when they line up as if living entities waiting to be noticed, learned to channel into his work from, as it looks to me, Nabokov and perhaps Proust. These lessons, however, did not teach him to mimic his masters.” NEW WORLD MAGAZINE www.books.glagoslav.com/the-vital-needs-of-the-dead

Hamid Ismailov

A Poet and Bin-Laden Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-33-3 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 1st September 2012

The “reality novel” A Poet and Bin-Laden, set in Central Asia at the turn of the 21st century against a swirling backdrop of Islamic fundamentalism in the Ferghana Valley and beyond, gives a first-hand account on the militants and Taliban’s internal life. The novel begins on the eve of 9/11, with the narrator’s haunting description of the airplane attack on the Twin Towers as seen on TV while he is on holiday in Central Asia; and tells the story of an Uzbek poet Belgi, who was disappointed in the authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan and became a terrorist in the eyes of the world. His journey begins with a search for a Sufi spiritual master and ends in guerrilla warfare, and it is this tension between a transcendental and a violent response to oppression, between the book and the bomb, between Archipelago GULAG and modern Central Asia and Afghanistan, that gives the novel its specific poignancy. In this book Hamid Ismailov masterfully intertwines fiction with documentary and provides wonderfully vivid accounts of historical events such as the siege of Kunduz, the breakout from Shebergan prison and the insurgency in the Ferghana Valley as witnessed by the Byronian figure of Belgi, who enters the inner sanctum of al-Qaeda and ultimately meets Sheikh bin Laden himself. The novel translated by Andrew Bromfield. Supported by English PEN and Arts Council, England.

www.books.glagoslav.com/a-poet-and-bin-laden 10

Uladzimir Karatkevich

King Stakh’s Wild Hunt Historical novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-10-4 Format: 203mm x 127mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 2nd November 2012

On a late rainy evening a young scientist, folklorist Andrey Belaretsky finds himself lodging overnight in a mysterious castle belonging to the Yanovskys, an old noble family. There he meets the hostess of the house, Nadzeya Yanovsky, a neurotic young thing and the last descendant of her family. Fears and terrible premonitions, for which she believes to have substantial grounds, overpower her. The act of betrayal by her far ancestor Roman Yanovsky the Old brought the curse on the family for twenty generations to come, and has since claimed lives of all the young noble’s relatives under bizarre and unnatural circumstances. Nadzeya expects her nearing demise in terror, moreover supported by the recent signs of the upcoming tragedy. Ghosts of the Little Man and the Lady-in-Blue were sighted wandering around the castle, and out in the fields from time to time shows itself the Wild Hunt. Belaretsky collects his wits and bravery, and decides to remain in the castle for a while to assist the hostess Yanovsky in getting rid of the ghosts, whose existence he dismisses wholeheartedly. The canvas of this detective story with a romantic twist includes a personal theme of the author’s sad concern for his nation’s destiny. The search for the truth that unites the novella’s characters is in fact the author’s contemplation - which he passes on to the reader - of the society in the late XIXth century, its conditions and its prospects for the future. The novel translated by Mary Mintz. Edited by Camilla Stein.

Alexander Terekhov

The Stone Bridge Historical thriller

ISBN 978-1-909156-64-7 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €26.15 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback The Big Book Prize 2009

June 3, 1943 at the Stone Bridge in Moscow a tragedy took place that shocked the political elite of that time and became the starting point of the investigation into other historical and political facts. Incredibly beautiful 14-year-old Nina Umanskaya, the daughter of a Soviet diplomat, was killed by her classmate and admirer, Shakhurin Volodya, a son of the People's Commissar. After that the young man shot himself. The Stone Bridge tells about the 10-years-long Terekhov’s investigation of the case of the “young wolves” and reveals some of the secrets of the Kremlin's private school, leading to the ruling top of the Soviet Communist Party. The search for truth of the Stone Bridge incident requires the reader’s patience: the historical authenticity of this work is supported by details of the search of witnesses who are trying to avoid an uncomfortable interrogation, supported by illustrations, documents and chronicles. The main purpose of this titanic work of investigators is to find the historical truth. But does it exist?

The novel translated by Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas, edited by Nina Chordas. “Instead of the standard Russian problems, What is to be done? Who is to blame?, Terekhov’s novel raises postmodern (or post-Soviet) questions: Who am I? What is history?” THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT “Terekhov’s novel is a serious literary event. Perhaps the first in the last few years, and, certainly, the most significant in the past year. Sensationalism of conclusions did not lead to this – the novel is a conceptual expression, and the critic now has access to the nearly forgotten joy of deciphering a deep, large and multifaceted text. And that can be celebrated as much by the reader as the future critic.” DMITRY BYKOV, famous Russian writer

Larysa Denysenko

Saraband Sarah’s Band Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-69-2 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €17.25 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 1st November 2012

Released on the eve of the Independence Day in the Ukraine in 2002, Saraband Sarah’s Band is a light family comedy that turns things upside down in the life of its main character Emile Polonsky, journalist by profession, happily married to Sarah. One day Emile receives guests who decide to stay – although they do ask the host’s permission first. But how can he refuse, for they are his new wife’s family and denying them access to his place would mean creating trouble he’d rather avoid… Emile wakes up one morning in the home he cannot recognize, and things he sees everywhere – on the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling and in the least expected corners of his house – pretty quickly turn into a form of daunting domestic insanity. His wife’s family, Sarah’s band, certainly means well, but their overrated enthusiasm suffocates Emile and becomes his biggest challenge. Will Polonsky survive the test? Will his marriage survive? Denisenko’s entertaining novel isn’t based on mere escapism; it’s introspective, reflective, filled with folk wisdom and subtle irony – the characteristics of top-notch classic humor. Saraband Sarah’s Band is a non-pretentious work of prose, aiming to inspire healthy criticism and a detached look at the society it plays out in, with its recognizable Jewish and Russian-Orthodox theme so particularly filigree and enjoyable in this novel.

The novel translated by Michael M. Naydan

Elvira Baryakina

White Shanghai Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-89-0 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, â&#x201A;Ź21.00 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, â&#x201A;Ź9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 20th November 2012

Some called it the splendor of the East; others the whore of Asia. A melting pot of different nations fused together by wars and business opportunities-that was Shanghai of the 1920s. The Great Powers are happily exploiting China for its cheap labor and reaping the rewards of its opium market, but the precarious balance of foreign interests is upset by the perennial troublemakers-the Russians. A flotilla of ships illegally enters Shanghai, carrying the last detachment of the defeated White Army. Among the refugees is Klim Rogov, a journalist whose life and marriage were destroyed by the Russian revolution. Now his only possession is his quick wits and worldly acumen. To survive the lawless jungle called Shanghai, he employs many guises, working as a reporter in a British run newspaper, rubbing shoulders with international gangsters as well as fighting the sinister communist agents. But whatever he comes up against, he never gives up hope of winning back his beloved wife Nina. After years of research in libraries and archives throughout the world, Elvira Baryakina masterly blended together multicultural backgrounds and built flamboyant characters, taking her readers on an exciting journey of passion, politics and crime of the early 20th century. Translated by Anna Muzychka and Benjamin Kuttner.

www.whiteshanghai.com

Compiled by Michael M. Naydan Herstories: An Anthology Of New Ukrainian Women Prose Writers Anthology ISBN 978-1-909156-01-2 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €18.45 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 25th November 2012 This unique prose collection and the first of its kind is a fabulous feast for the reader and a celebration of styles, sensations and perspectives. It is stimulating and challenging, as well as touching and revealing on a cornucopia of themes and issues relevant to readers everywhere. Women’s prose writing has exploded on the literary scene in Ukraine just prior to and following Ukrainian independence in 1991. Over the past two decades scores of fascinating new women authors have emerged. These authors write in a wide variety of styles and genres including short stories, novels, essays, and new journalism. In the collection you will find: realism, magical realism, surrealism, the fantastic, deeply intellectual writing, newly discovered feminist perspectives, philosophical prose, psychological mysteries, confessional prose, and much more. You’ll find an entire gamut of these Ukrainian women writers’ experiences that range from deep spirituality to candid depictions of sexuality and interpersonal relations. You’ll find tragedy and humor and on occasion humor in the tragedy. You’ll find urban prose, edgy, caustic, and intellectual; as well as prose harkening back to village life and profound tragedies from the Soviet past that have left marks of trauma on an entire nation. This is a collection of Ukrainian women’s stories, histories that serve to tell her unique stories in English translation. Substantial excerpts from novels and translations of complete shorter works of each author will give the reader deep insight into this burgeoning phenomenon of contemporary Ukrainian women’s prose.

Michel Terestchenko

The First Oligarch (English, French) Biographical novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-74-6 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €18.45 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 25th November 2012

This book is composed by a direct descendant of the legendary Terestchenko family, Michel Terestchenko. Through the eyes of the direct participant, who was his grandfather, the author attempts to experience the events that took place in the end of the XIXth century and the first half of the XXth century, the events that altered history. Born in 1886, at the age of thirty one Michael Terestchenko is a bright young man, remarkable in his aspirations and methods, the sole owner of one of the largest capitals of the Russian Empire. Terestchenko becomes the deputy to the State Duma of the Russian Empire, then assumes the position of the Russia’s Minister of Finances, and subsequently takes on the function of the Minister of International Relations in the Russian Provisional Government after the February Revolution in 1917. In the course of a catastrophic national tragedy he loses everything, but manages to rebuild, already being an immigrant. Despite the odds he restores his professional fame of one of the world’s most respected and influential bankers. This book tells also the story of a family whose hard work becomes the example of generosity and philanthropy, charity, love and care for the needy, the deprived and the orphaned. The family whose public service is till this day remembered and celebrated in their heritage - temples and art galleries that they built, theatres and universities they established, hospitals and orphanages they founded.

Serhiy Zhadan

Depeche Mode Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-84-5 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €17.45 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 28th November 2012

The place is Kharkiv, the year is 1993. As if in somnambulism, Soviet war veterans and upstart businessmen listen in the concert hall to an American preacher of whose type there were plenty at the time on the post-Soviet territories. What once were the young communist head quarters is now an advertising agency. A youth radio station of this eastern Ukrainian city in collaboration with their London colleagues creates a feature on the Irish folk band Depeche Mode and the role of the harmonica in the struggle against capitalist oppression. And so the Western songs make their way into ordinary Ukrainian homes of ordinary people, who only by a mere chance happen to listen to these tunes that tell them nothing. In the middle of a craze three friends, an anti-Semitic Jew ‘Dog Pavlov’, an unfortunate entrepreneur Vasya ‘Communist’ and the narrator Zhadan, nineteen years of age and unemployed, seek to find their old pal Sasha ‘Sparkplug’ to tell him that his step-father shot himself dead. Their search leads them to a decaying factory site where they steal a Molotov bust – archaic, but historically significant and dear to someone who was willing to pay just enough for the band to buy a cart of liquor; then they turn up in a Roma neighborhood where they know a friendly dealer, and then they take a local train to the pioneer camp "Chemist" where Sparkplug allegedly works as a supervisor. When Zhadan finally meets Sasha, he does not have the guts to tell him the truth.

Taras Shevchenko

Kobzar Poetry

ISBN 978-1-909156-54-8 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €20.90 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: 30th November 2012

No one can tell a better story of the Ukraine than the kobzar, a native son who walked its many roads and acquired a vast collection of experiences. It is this iconic figure, who feels the land with his feet and drinks it with his eyes, that is the prism through which Taras Shevchenko composed his pioneering collection of poems, The Kobzar. The fate of the poems themselves is extraordinary; written over a span of many years, they mark many crossroads in the poet’s life. They were composed on the road and in the city, in prison and in exile; they are illuminated by the white nights of the imperial capitol and filled with the warm wind of the Caspian deserts. Shevchenko’s life, from serfdom to an internationally acclaimed artist, is the cloth from which each poem is cut. Many of Shevchenko’s own concerns in the poems are also cultural and national concerns of the Ukraine. Today, his poems are an enduring literary monument - a testament to the history and evolution of the Ukrainian language, to the people and their complex fate, to their hardships and triumphs.

Translated by Peter Fedynsky.

Oleg Pavlov

Asystole Novel

ISBN 978-1-909156-79-1 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €17.45 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback

Publication date: 1st December 2012 Znamya Literary Magazine Prize 2009 Shortlisted for the Big Book Award 2010 From the first pages it becomes apparent that Asystole is a novel about love of life in its purest, instinctive and intimate form. It’s also a novel about human faith in its existence and a desire to experience this love. Author Oleg Pavlov places his character – a boy who grows to be a man and is clearly personified by the writer’s own outlook on life – in impossible and familiar circumstances, impossible not to relate to. An adult is shaped in childhood. Chaotic, anxious and at the same time withdrawn narration seems to have no direction and no resolution. Except that the life of the people, who are in fact children of a broken destiny, is real and not much needs to be said to make it our own. Laconic and ‘to the point’ observations of Pavlov’s protagonist as he goes, are chilling at times. They pierce through flesh right to the bone – the quality only the naked truth can have. Asystole is moreover about the by-stander effect, about a disconnected and malfunctioning society and a struggle of one not to merge into the faceless mass of many. Modern, deeply thought through and heartfelt, this novel is an examination of the physics of human soul. Pavlov’s Universe has a special arrangement – if it was up to him, humans wouldn’t be allowed in it, for the privilege of being human requires living up to the title.

Lubov Bazan

A History Of Belarus

Popular science literature ISBN 978-1-909156-59-3 Format: 229mm x 152mm Paperback, €19.35 EPUB/PDF/Kindle, €9.95 Also available in Hardback Publication date: August 2013

Not only the country that this book is about has a beautiful name, White Russia, it also to this day remains a white spot on the map to many. Unavailable to the English language reader, publications on the history of Belarus conceal from the outside world the story of the nation whose residential territory exceeds in size the area of some European countries. Throughout its history, Belarus has been continuously included in various state formations such as Kievan Rus’, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. Lubov Bazan’s book is a detailed narration of all these meaningful milestones in the life of Belarus. The book is built on the factual material that is delivered to the reader chronologically in an attractive and systemic fashion. The author chooses to provide the reader with a leeway for an autonomous analysis of the historic material, indiscriminately allowing for the exposure to all presently available concepts on the matters of such theoretical discussion triggers as the Belorussian ethnogenesis, the origin of the Belorussian language, ethnic identification and national awareness of the Belorussians, problems of the Unia between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.