Vladimir Sharov – The Rehearsals for Hebrew language

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Hebrew language rights sold to Hava LaOr Press, Israel

The novel THE REHEARSALS by Vladimir Sharov recounts the failure of the human race to produce God‘s great play on the stage of the world. Rehearsing means repeating, to perpetually review the play and to try again and again, thereby immortalizing the play throughout the ages.

It is not without reason that, in this secular age, Sharov has set the plot in one of those Old-Orthodox communities that considers itself to be God‘s last chosen people and believes that their village is the New Jerusalem.

Vyacheslav Kuritsyn – Nabokov’s Summer in Berlin 1926

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Nabokov’s summer of 1926 as a standalone adventure

A young writer has just published his first novel and married, enjoys great success in exile, considers himself a genius, and is convinced that his novel will soon be translated into every language and that he will regain the riches he lost in Russia. Therefore, he is happy despite his poverty. The paradox is that his plans will come true, but only thirty years later, something he doesn’t yet know.

Vladimir Nabokov spent the summer 1926 alone in Berlin. His wife is at a health resort on the Baltic Sea.

«…Kuritsyn has a brilliant command of the material, and his meticulous attention misses no detail, no matter how small, of the writer‘s biography, no subtle passages in Nabokov‘s letters and texts, and much more, which Kuritsyn sometimes reconstructs intuitively, yet one trusts this reconstruction…» ZNAMYA

Ramil Khalikov – Brodsky, Basmanova, The Third

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About Joseph Brodsky’s muse, his true love

Next year will mark 30 years since Joseph Brodsky’s death in New York in 1996. Several books about him will surely be published to mark the occasion. But who knows his only muse and true love? Literary scholars agree that his relationship with Marina Basmanova was crucial to Brodsky’s life. The vast majority of his love poems are dedicated to her (M.B.).

Basmanova is still alive today and will be 100 years old in three years. But to this day, she – and a Third – remain the traitors who stabbed the poet in the back at the most difficult moment of his life.

Ramil Khalikov, author of Tatar origin and winner of the Platonov Prize, has now published his book BRODSKY, BASMANOVA, THE THIRD about this relationship. His fictionalized story, based on true events, focuses on the decisive years. Khalikov’s research and conversations with contem-porary witnesses gave him reason to consider the complicated twists and turns of their relationship from a significantly different perspective than before.

Viktor Martinovich – The Good Always Wins – in German

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German edition published by Voland&Quist

Voland&Quist has already published 3 novels by Viktor Martinovich. His latest novel GOOD ALWAYS WINS was impossible to publish in original in Belarus or Russia. So the German publication is the first.

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 – Bat Ami, In the Face of Fire – in Italian

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Italian language edition published by Voland

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.

The novel has been chosen by Ukrainian PEN Club among the Best Books of the Year 2021.

Aleksei Ivanov – The Geographer has drunk the Globe – in Chinese

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Chinese translation published by Neo-Cogito

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

Aleksei Fedyarov – Sfumato, Dead Birds are Flying – in Czech

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Czech translation rights published by Maraton Publishers

Welcome to Russia 2032. There is peace in the world. Russia, Europe, the United States and China signed a convention with Russia: in exchange for its own security, the West no longer cares how the Russian government treats its citizens under its isolated power and only occasionally checks whether foreign policy agreements are respected. Russia is fenced and the borders are closed.

The hyper-real political landscape of Aleksei Fedyarov’s novel SFUMATO – DEAD BIRDS ARE FLYING is explicitly not post-apocalyptic, but rather develops consistently from today’s political realities.

And Fedyarov knows both sides of the barbed wire by own experience. Lawyer by education he was an investigator for the public prosecutor’s office for ten years, then later as a business man sentenced and sent to a prison camp in the Urals, today a human rights activist and head of the legal department of a Charity Fund that helps Russian prisoners and their families.

Anna Starobinets – Vixen Hill in Spanish

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Spanish language edition published by Impedimenta

The newest novel VIXEN HILL by Anna Starobinets is a horror thriller in the genre of mystic realism. The action takes place in the Far East, on the border of the Soviet Union and Manchuria (China) in 1945, right after the end of World War II and the Japanese occupation of the region. The novel combines the history of the USSR, Chinese mythology, Japanese genetic engineering and Siberian shamanism.

«Starobinets doesn‘t let the reader relax for a minute as she manages to keep up the hellish pace over seven hundred and something pages.» MEDUZA (Galina Yuzefovich)

Dmitri Danilov – Sasha, hello – in Italian

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Italian language edition published by Voland Editore

This new novel SASHA, HELLO by Dmitri Danilov with dystopian character moves right on the edge of the real situation in Russia. Death penalty was recently introduced as part of a project to humanize the penal system for crimes where society has no real sense of wrongdoing. Consensual sex with minors is included. However, the execution of the death penalty was humanized to the maximum. The prison is now called Combinat, you live like in a luxury hotel. Executions are no longer carried out by executioners. Instead, a warden has recently taken you out for a walk every day through the same hallway, where one fine day you will be torn to pieces by a salvo of an automatic machine gun. This can happen in three days or in thirty years. As algorithm would have it.

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)

Dmitri Danilov – Sasha, hello – in Spanish for Latin America

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Spanish language edition for Latin America published by Ediciones del Lirio

Dmitri Danilov’s double award winning novel SASHA, HELLO! is welcoming us to the new Russia. Prisons are now called Combinat, you live like in a luxury hotel. Executions are no longer carried out by executioners. Instead, a warden takes you out for a walk every day through the same hallway, where one fine day you will be torn to pieces by a salvo of an algorithm controlled machine gun. This can happen in three days or in thirty years. As luck would have it. All humane, because you actually don‘t notice anything and can go on living your life as before.

The main character of the book 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. This novel moves right on the edge of the real.