The documentary novel A Life on the Cross provides a unique insight into the life of Andrey Tarkovsky, the infamous film director and a man whose life was by no means free of unedifying behaviour and errors of judgement. Andrei Tarkovsky died in a Paris hospital in 1986, aged just 54. An internationally acclaimed icon of the film industry, the legacy Tarkovsky left for his fans included Andrei Rublev, Stalker, Nostalgia and a host of other brilliant works. In the Soviet Union, however, Tarko...

The two novels included in this book are works of Russian magic realism. the volume is written with the focus on the now ever apparent debate surrounding ethics of human cloning, a search for one's home base and a balance between one's happiness and the ultimate truth. In the first novel, Shadowplay on a Sunless Day, Anatoly Kudryavitsky writes about life in modern-day Moscow and about an emigrant's life in Germany. The novel deals with problems of self-identification, national identity ...

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...

Bohdan Ihor Antonych. The remarkable Ukrainian poet and literary critic Bohdan Ihor Antonych (1909-1937) lived for only a brief 28 years. Originally from the mountainous Lemko region in Poland, where a variant of Ukrainian is spoken, he was home-schooled for the first eleven years of his life until 1920 when he entered the Queen Sophia State Gymnasium in Syanok, which he completed eight years later. Antonych then matriculated at Lviv University. Lviv is the cultural center of Western Ukraine...

An avid reader of English-language poets such as William Carlos Williams and Stanley Kunitz, Ilchenko is one of the best Ukrainian poets writing in free verse today. His poetry is associative, flitting, and fragmentary. At times he does not form complete sentences in his poems and links words together into phrases before shifting into another thought or idea. The language of his poetry has a tendency to collapse into itself, often forcing the reader to reevaluate a word or line, to reread a p...

Leonardo’s Handwriting is a romantic morality tale, with an unconventional woman at its heart. Nature has given the heroine, Anna, the gift of clairvoyance, and it is this that determines her singular fate. The characteristic “left-handed mirror handwriting”, which in psychology came to be known as “Leonardo’s handwriting” (since that’s how the Renaissance genius wrote his notes), simply adds to the “weirdness” both of Anna’s personality and the twists and turns of the nov...

In this illustrated book made for children and adults alike, you’ll learn about the greatest and most intelligent game of all time: chess! With all the rules of the game simply explained, you’ll become acquainted with the three stages of a chess game, as well as every single chess piece, one-by-one.

But before this, you’ll take a fascinating tour of the history of chess, reaching back to the game’s very beginnings almost 2000 years ago. Turn the pages and discover:

Why an old wise...

A philosopher obstinately searching for truth in the 1700s, badgered by the church for speaking out on human rights and the hypocrisy of the ruling elite, Skovoroda was forced to live an unsettled life.

Hryhoriy Skovoroda (1722–1794), dubbed a “wandering” philosopher, was one of the most colourful figures in 18th century Ukraine. He spent most of his life travelling about the country and spoke out in defence of justice and freedom for the common folk, often to his own detriment. His son...

The twenty-two stories in this collection, set mostly in Eastern Europe during World War Two, depict a world fraught with conflict and chaos. Theodore Odrach is witness to the horrors that surround him, and as both an investigative journalist and a skilful storyteller, using humor and irony, he guides us through his remarkable narratives. His writing style is clean and spare, yet at the same time compelling and complex. There is no short supply of triumph and catastrophe, courage and cowardic...