Het is 2033. Twintig jaar geleden heeft een nucleaire oorlog de beschaafdewereld in puin gelegd. In Moskou heeft een klein deel van de bevolking zijn toevlucht gevonden in de grootste atoomvrije schuilkelder op aarde: de metro…

Met alleen al in Rusland inmiddels ruim twee miljoen lezers voor de internetversie en een half miljoen gedrukte exemplaren, vertalingen in tientallen talen en een bewerking tot fascinerend computerspel is Metro 2033 dé SF-cultroman van deze tijd. Deze postapocalypti...

‘“Brother, you have another pair of boots,” Jaroslav Hašek said to me, grabbing me by the sleeve. “How do you know?” “Yesterday you were in army boots, and today you’ve got civilian ones on. I’d buy those army boots off you.” And in this way my high-laced boots, which I was given by the Austrian Red Cross way back in Beryozovka-za-Baikalom, came into Hašek’s possession. It was a silly thing to do. Not because I should have known that I wouldn’t get a kopeck out of Haš...

Bera and Cucumber is a series of eight linked short stories. The links between them are manifold and include emigration to Israel and elsewhere, the Old Testament, and the sea. However, by far the main connection is the cosmopolitan city of Odesa, specifically the Jewish quarter, with its many and varied inhabitants and their professions, both legal and illicit. There are also many references to the famous landmarks of the city, as well as its trams, shops and suburbs.

The language of these s...

Elena Dolgopyat was born and raised in the USSR, trained as a computer programmer in a Soviet military facility, and retrained as a cinematographer post-Perestroika. Fusing her diverse experiences with her own sensitivities and preoccupations, and weaving throughout a colourful thread of magic realism, she has produced an unsettling group of fifteen stories all concerned in some way with the theme of estrangement. Elena herself, in an interview given at the time of the book’s launch, said, ...

The Witch of Konotop (written in 1833 and published in 1836–37) is a beloved, classic Ukrainian comic novella that is little known outside of Ukraine. Part of the reason for this has been the difficulty in translating its complex stylistic levels that range from archaic Old Church Slavonic to colorful, colloquial Ukrainian. It shares several stylistic similarities to Mykola Hohol’s (aka Nikolai Gogol’s) Ukrainian horror tales in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1833). These include a fo...

This powerfully-written first novel from Ukrainian author Anastasiia Marsiz is set in and around Cupra Marittima, a small seaside town on Italy’s Adriatic coast. So closely is the area described, the reader could find their way around without difficulty. They might easily go there expecting to find the Chalet Martina, a seafront restaurant opening onto the beach. To enter the restaurant is to step into the territory of fiction, but in Marsiz’s expert hands the boundary is crossed unconsci...

In 1914, the Russian Empire is at its peak of affluence. The future looks bright, and spring brings new promise with the migrating swallows heralding summer. Ivan Alexandrovich, internationally renowned professor of ornithology, lives with his granddaughter Tanyusha, an aspiring concert pianist, in their family villa in Sivtsev Vrazhek, a little lane in central Moscow. They hold weekly musical soirées, and entertain their friends ― dashing cadets, scientists, lawyers, and musicians. Howeve...

Boryslav in Flames by Ivan Franko is a pioneering novel that depicts the rise of the labour movement in Western Ukraine. The story unfolds against the backdrop of the industrial revolution in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the 1860s. As industry burgeons in Boryslav, a nascent working class emerges, inspired by socialist ideals – a unique phenomenon in mostly agrarian Galicia.

Central to the narrative is Benedio, a lowly mason’s assistant who organizes the striking workers. This is of...