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Summer 2020. Mass protests against Lukashenko‘s regime out on the streets of Minsk. Inside the State Theater the rehearsals for a contemporary play about the Inquisition process against Joan of Arc. Matvei has only a small supporting role. The big role in his life awaits him elsewhere. Matvei has to save the cat of his beloved former teacher from her apartment, because she was sentenced to prison for a critical social media post. When he finds himself in a trial he meets a punk poet, Lady Di, a forgotten princess, who is also on trial and manages to convince the judge to acquit her by speaking boldly. She wants to make the world a better place, her weapon is words.

Aleksei Nikitin’s novel BAT-AMI, IN THE FACE OF FIRE is not a documentary novel, but its story – inspired in part by the author‘s family history – is based on files relating to 1941-1942 secret service operations from the archives of the Ukrainian Secret Service. These sources enabled the author to tell the true story of the famous boxer Goldinov. Because the widespread theories about what happened to him – the rumours that were still circulating in Kyiv after the war – have largely proven to be false, as has old Yad Vashem version of events. The descriptions of Ukraine’s complex conflicts involving an overpowering Russian brother state, the Soviet secret service, German occupation, partisans and patriotic nationalist freedom fighters cast their shadows even onto the Ukraine of today.

In the Russian province of the 90s a young teacher fights with the children of the new generation. He has been assigned to the most rebellious class. The „geography teacher“ and the teenagers, who are ready to break him, first sit in the walls of the classroom, but then outside the walls they together experience an adventure of comradeship and initiation.

Aleksei Ivanov’s novel THE GEOGRAPHER HAS DRUNK THE GLOBE pumps new blood into the channels of emotional perception through literature and lets many readers again – literally as the first time – feel very simple and familiar things: winter, love, wind, trust, loneliness, the smell of cigarette smoke, the taste of vodka, the headache of a hangover.“ GALINA YUZEFOVICH

The main character of the book, Sergei, is reminiscent of all the key figures of the most famous anti-utopias at once, from D-503 to Josef K., but the conditions in which he is placed have never been told in such a way.

Double awarded by non-governmental institutions: Book of the Year 2022 (by Russian publisher’s community) and Yasnaya Polyana Award 2022 (sponsored by Samsung)

The book NEAR THE WAR by Maria Galina has been awarded the Dar Prize 2025. Maria Galina has declined the award and wrote an open letter about her refusal. She also sent a statement to the jury and organizers. Both documents are published on the website of Dar Prize with a statement by Mikhail Shishkin as chairman of the jury.

These diary-like notes by Maria Galina are titled NEAR THE WAR because they are not about the war, but about the new everyday life that was caused and created by the war. They are autobiographically rooted painful descriptions of metamorphoses from Russian to Ukrainian, from life in Moscow to Odesa, from old to new communities. This book is not about the aggressors or the chaos they cause, not about who is right and who is wrong. It is about an author‘s return to her city like Odysseus has reached Ithaca again.

Aleksei Ivanov’s novel THE FOOD BLOCK is a very tricky vampire novel about a highly topical ideological conflict that runs through the entire book on many levels: Independence of thought, dreaminess, the urge for freedom and the attempt to understand our complicated world – as a counterpart to the simple answers and blunt rules that have always been and still are set up, out of laziness of thought or just to enslave people. A novel that is not only straightforward and strong like a wooden post, but also follows the rules of the genre so well, that the reader doesn‘t even notice how he has already been bitten and infected.

In Dutch language there already had been the translation of Vol. 1 of Anna Starobinets‚ children’s detective series BEASTLY CRIME CHRONICLES.  Now we are happy to have found a new and newly founded publisher who is enthousiastic about taking over and continuing with the full series.

All the heroes of this book series are animals, but they know how to love and hate, lie and tell the truth to their face, trust and despair, betray and save – no worse and no better than us humanoid readers. Who is friend and who is foe, who is an innocent, fluffy victim, who is a deadly female predator, who is a hostage and who is an intruder, you only find out at the end, because according to the rules of the genre, the perpet- rator always remains unknown until the very end.