Poetry has always been in the Kazakh blood, and Galym Mutanov is one of the newly independent nation's leading poets, a shining light in the Kazakh literary world. In the range of his poetry, Mutanov truly captures the essence of the Kazakh spirit - from the tough and ageless traditions of the wild steppe to moments of tender intimacy. The measured Islamic wisdom and deep sense of morality so intrinsic to Kazakh life of old shines through in verse after verse.The figure of Abai, the 19th cent...

This anthology reflects a search of the Ukrainian nation for its identity, the roots of which lie deep inside Ukrainian-language poetry. Some of the included poets are well-known locally and internationally; among them are Serhiy Zhadan, Halyna Kruk, Ostap Slyvynsky, Marianna Kijanowska, Oleh Kotsarev, Anna Bagriana and, of course, the living legend of Ukrainian poetry, Vasyl Holoborodko. The next Ukrainian poetic generation also features prominently in the collection. Such poets as Les Beley...

Although he never left his native Kraków except for relatively short periods, Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907) achieved worldwide fame, both as a painter, and Poland's greatest dramatist of the first half of the twentieth century. Acropolis: the Wawel Plays, brings together four of Wyspiański's most important dramatic works in a new English translation by Charles S. Kraszewski. All of the plays centre on Wawel Hill: the legendary seat of royal and ecclesiastical power in the poet's native...

Because the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz is so closely identified with the history of the Polish nation, one often reads him as an institution, rather than a real person. In the Crimean and Erotic Sonnets of the national bard, we are presented with the fresh, real, and striking poetry of a living, breathing man of flesh and blood. Mickiewicz proved to be a master of Petrarchan form. His Erotic Sonnets chronicle the development of a love affair from its first stirrings to its disillusioning denou...

At the beginning of the twentieth century, 1908, a young Kyivan, Klym Koshovy miraculously flies the coop and escapes from persecution by tsarist police to Lviv. However, even here he is arrested - near the corpse of a well-known local lawyer Yevhen Soyka. The deceased had dubious friends and powerful enemies in the city. Suicide or murder? The search for truth leads Koshovy through the dark labyrinths of Lviv's streets. On his way - facing pickpockets, criminal kingpins and Russian terrorist...

In his book Lenin: How to Become a Leader, Vladlen Loginov, one of Russia’s leading authorities on Vladimir Lenin, discusses the revolutionary leader’s early years, his family, his political awakening and subsequent activities.

He reveals the beginnings of the creator of the world’s first socialist country, as well as the source of the future statesman’s incredible willpower, his ability to influence people, his drive to succeed and his leadership qualities. All of these, the book dem...

This Wolf Messing memoir by Tatiana Lungin presents a revealing portrait of one of the greatest psychic performers of the 20th century. Lungin chronicles Messing's incredible life and career, and provides an inside look at psychic research behind the Iron Curtain.Born a Polish Jew, young Messing gained an international reputation as the world's greatest telepath while touring Europe together with the famous Busch Circus. In Vienna, messing met Albert Einstein who brought him in contact with S...

Sasha "Sankya" Tishin, and his friends are part of a generation stuck between eras. They don't remember the Soviet Union, but they also don't believe in the promise of opportunity for all in the corrupt, capitalistic new Russia. They belong to an extremist group that wants to build a better Russia by tearing down the existing one. Sasha, alternately thoughtful and naïve, violent and tender, dispassionate and romantic, hopeful and hopeless, is torn between the dying village of his youth and t...

‘Perhaps some day I’ll disappear forever,’ muses the master-builder Psymmachus in Cyprian Kamil Norwid’s Cleopatra and Caesar, ‘Becoming one with my work…’ Today, exactly two hundred years from the poet’s birth, it is difficult not to hear Norwid speaking through the lips of his character. The greatest poet of the second phase of Polish Romanticism, Norwid, like Gerard Manley Hopkins in England, created a new poetic idiom so ahead of his time, that he virtually ‘disappeared�...

Sacred Scripture quotes Jesus Christ only once during the first thirty years of His life on earth. The twelve-year-old asks two precise and profound questions: “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business (Luke 2:49 NKJV)? Other translations say “about My Father’s house.” Neither the Greek word for “business” nor “house” is found within this pivotal verse. For centuries Biblical scholars delved deeply into this interpretive predicament. De...