This «shocking» novel by Yury Andrukhovich, a renown Ukrainian writer, the Herder Prize winner (2001) describes one — but very special! — day in the life of Otto von F., a poet and a student at the Moscow Institute of Literature. The author describes his character’s funny and sad, grotesque and sometimes tragic, often drunk yet realistic adventures in Moscow during the heyday of perestroika.

The reknowned prose-writer has issued over 20 books in some of the best Russian publishing houses. Most of the stories making up the new book have been published in the so-called “thick” literary magazines like Novy mir or Znamya as well as in French and American periodicals.
Georgy Ball’s writing is hovering between reality and miracle, between life and death. His characters experience things both ordinary and mystical, their sense of freedom can suddenly turn into loneliness, their desperation can rise to a catharsis.

This album book is an original combination of a long poem by the Russian Nobel prize-winner for literature and a variety of photographs made by a well-known painter. Together with the poem, the photos reflecting the life of today’s Russia emphasize both the drama and the absurdity of the present situation in the country, to which the great poet’s shrewdness and the photographer’s keen and ironic eye make their extraordinary contributions.

Grisha Bruskin’s new book Direct and Indirect Objects features many characters the reader has already met. The fourth episode in Bruskin’s long-running series, it is also a great stand-alone read.

Particulars by Mail, the final book of the trilogy, is structured like an alphabetic name index. Unlike the first two books, whose protagonist is the author himself, the third book has as many characters as there are names in the index.
On the one hand, Particulars is the third installment in a series, on the other, it is a fully-fledged ‘thing in itself’, a work which stands on its own two feet.

The works of Grisha Bruskin (b.1945), an outstanding writer and sculptor, remained until 1986 almost unknown to the general audience; he was routinely prevented by the Soviet authorities from publicly displaying his works. However, in 1988 his works became a huge success with the Western audience and are now found in the largest world museums. In 1999 the German government selected Bruskin to represent Russia in an international artistic project at the renovated Reichstag building in Berlin. Currently he resides in New York. This is a first separate edition of Bruskin’s autobiographical prose illustrated by the author himself.

This was followed by With you in my Thoughts, a collection of memories, letters, family jokes, parables, documents, funny and tragic stories over several generations of Bruskin’s family.

Yuri Buida made his debut in 1991 as a 37-year-old man from a provincial city. Since then he has beaten all literary records by having published over 30 compositions in the best of the so-called “thick” magazines like Novy Mir, Znamya, Oktyabr, Volga, etc. Three of the compositions were his longer novels: Don Domino; Yermo and Boris and Gleb. The present book, The Prussian Bride, can also be considered a novel, even though the “chapters” display a wide variety of genres and styles, from fantasy and the grotesque to a stern (even cruel) realism. The author demonstrates plot ingenuity and a masterful use of shock effects.

Yury Buida (b.1954) is published widely in literary magazines; he is the author of novels (Don Domino and Yermo) and a volume of short stories (Prussian Bride) and a winner of the Appolon Grigoryev Prize. He defines the genre of his new book as «schina». Roughly translated as «isms», this suffix has no equivalents in other languages and, according to Buida, is as important for Russian culture as the «mysterious Russian souls», poor roads, and vodka. The author believes that the search for national distinctiveness is not only central to Russian literature, but became one of its manias, or, in author’s words, «schinas».

Over one hundred authors of different generations and artistic schools, residing all over Russia as well as in the Ukraine, Germany, France, Great Britain and the US, contributed to this volume. It includes more straightforward pieces of «civic poetry», as well as the poems that address the issue of the Chechen war in more subtle terms. This volume demonstrates the wide variety of ways, in which a modern Russian poet can approach «civic» issues.