The book is the fullest critical anthology devoted to Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) to have been published so far. The essays collected here show a wide variety of opinions, from highly laudatory to biting ones, which had been expressed over a period of 50 years both in Russia and abroad.

The book explores literature as a field of competitive struggle, while writers’ strategies are presented as patterns of a game, in which the reader can join, winning a higher social status. The period under investigation saw a specific change in the position of literature and its relationship with the governing forces, which the author is revealing.

A most valuable contribution to the further rediscovery and reinterpretation of the works of Mikhail Kuzmin – one of the key figures of the Russian literary Silver Age. The book includes a number of articles and rich archival materials previously unpublished.

In his book a leading "Silver Age" expert studies the uncanny and ramified connections of Russian literature with various occult and esoteric doctrines (spiritualism, theosophy, anthroposophy, freemasonry, rosicrucians etc.). This unique work gives a vivid account of personal involvements of many great Russian poets (Andrei Bely, Mikhail Kuzmin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Valery Brusov) with enigmatic personalities of the so-called "occult renaissance" (i.e. A. Mintslova) and the profound – explicit and implicit – impact of these doctrines of their creative writing. The book is supplied with rare historical and literary documents and illustrations.

This is one of the first full-length biographies of the prominent poet and prose writer, who was active in the first three decades of the 20th century. The book is based on archival materials, the authors' wonderful knowledge of the period’s culture as well as a profound analysis of Kuzmin's writings.

Centuries-long coexistence of several cultures in Wilno (Vilnius) has turned this city into a distinctly particular and unusual phenomenon. This diversity goes back to the historical background; to the Great Duchy of Lithuania. The city used to be the capital of this Duchy. The book is committed to visualization of Wilno’s image in the literature works, poetry first of all, of its main cultural traditions: Polish, Jewish and Lithuanian ones, of the 19th and 20th centuries. A significant part of the literature works has been presented in Russian for the first time. The city’s special aura has defined a fresh glance at its complex and controversial “literature expanse”.

This French critic examines six novels of Nabokov’s Russian period (Korol’, Dama, Valet; Kamera Obskura; Priglashenie na Kazn’; Dar; Mashen’ka; and Podvig).

This collection of articles by a renown sociologist covers a wide range of issues that fall within the field best described as «organization and dynamics of culture». Dubin deals with such topics as the culture of oral and written communication and mass media (rumors, anecdotes, songs, newspapers and magazines, books, advertising), certain literary genres (biography and autobiography, science fiction, detective story, etc.), the role of censorship in society, images of defeat and success, the institutions that reproduce culture (publishing houses, libraries, museums). The author is especially interested in intelligentsia, its formation, identity, deprofessionalization, and ultimately, disintegration.

This book deals with the phenomenon of literature as a social institution repostulating its role and functioning in modern society. Special attention is payed to such forms of social communication as magazines, newspapers, fiction and non-fiction books.

140х215 (60х90/16), hard cover, 280 pp., 2007
ISBN 5-86793-505-1

The central plot of the book is a story of Pusnkin’s ideas referring to the English authors. They include not only Shakespeare, Byron and Walter Scott who have been often discussed in connection with Pushkin’s works, but also John Milton and J. Bunyan, S. Coleridge and R. Southey, Barry Cornwall and J. Wilson. English precedents, sources and models which have significantly influenced the writing strategy of Pushkin, are viewed from the point of those literature and cultural contexts in which they have been reconsidered in Pushkin’s works. Such look on the part of the English literature provides an opportunity for the new comprehension and original interpretation of many Pushkin’s texts, including “Antiaris” and “by Pindemonte”, “Captain’s daughter” and “Angelo”, “The miser knight” and “Feast amid the plague”.