Among 10 best novels set in Russia

 

Selected and published by UK newspaper The Guardian

«2017» by Olga Slavnikova
«Happiness is Possible» by Oleg Zaionchkovski

We are happy that two of our titles can be found among the 10 best novels by modern Russian writers set in Russia and helping you explore Russia’s vast landscapes and complex history.

»Oleg Zaionchkovski makes Moscow small and cosy, and turns its residents into friendly, small town neighbours… this is classic mood prose. What mood? Good mood, pure and simple. And anyone who is not happy with that is beyond help.«
MAYA KUCHERSKAYA
»2017 by Olga Slavnikova…this enigmatic, frenetic, interesting, naive, enchanting, determined, heartrending book is one you have to read and allow it to move you.«
ANDREI NEMZER

Olga Slavnikova – The Man Who Could Not Die (The Immortal)

new sale

Romanian language rights sold to Epica

A bed ridden Soviet veteran is being looked after by his wife and daughter. Long may he live, the family is surviving on his pension. The two women create a virtual world for him in his room, cut him off from all sources of information and play him old news recorded on video. All this to convince the old man of the continued existence of his beloved Soviet Union. But all the old man wants – is to finally die. Two generations in an absurdly comical and tragic vicious circle. Is there a way out?

The novel IMMORTAL has been published in 4 languages so far. In her preface to the French edition by Gallimard Olga Slavnikova writes:  „This is no Good bye Lenin clone which you have in front of you. The novel Immortal is a fundamentally different product. The book begins where the film ends…“

Leonid Yuzefovich – Winter Road

new publication

Serbian language edition has been published by Russika

In St. Petersburg the Bolsheviks have already won the Civil War. But in the far east of Siberia, the Yakuts have dared to launch the final uprising against the Red Army. In his twice award-winning non-fictional novel WINTER ROAD, Leonid Yuzefovich is able to portray deeper human motives: the love, passion and individual suffering that are buried in the ideology are revealed and the characters shown to be both oppressor and victim. In the end each individual is responsible for the Russian tragedy.

In 2022 we will have the 100th anniversary of the last battle of the Russian Revolution in winter 1922 when General Anatoly Pepelyaev hastens to the aid of the Yakuts in Vladivostok with a force of volunteers. Pepelyaev – a poet and seeker of truth, a fighter for self-determination and the freedom of men – sees in supporting the Yakuts a last chance to defend his own political ideals.

The full English translation by Marian Schwartz is available for proof reading. 7 languages sold so far.

Grigori Kanovich – Devilspel

new sale

Albanian language rights sold to Shkupi/ Skopje

The novel is set during the tragic few weeks in June-July 1941, when the German army in a sudden attack defeated the Red Army and within a few days occupied Lithuania. Grigori Kanovich’s writing is informed by his deep native knowledge of the Lithuanian countryside where he grew up in the 1930s, but he is no less intimately familiar with the Russian and Jewish cultures. Yet his real interest as a writer is in exploring the fundamental and universal ethical conflict between good and evil, which transcends the limits of concrete space and time.

«DEVILSPEL is a moving and elegant novel of fine character portraits, told in restrained but beautiful prose, set in a small town in Lithuania at a watershed moment of history, when ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust enter the lives of the local Jews and non-Jews alike, dividing neighbours and families into persecuted and persecutors.»
ROSIE GOLDSMITH, Chair of the Judges EBRD Literature Prize

Anna Matveeva – Dyatlov Pass

new publication

Latvian edition published by Latvijas Mediji

Anna Matveeva’s novel THE DYATLOV PASS is dedicated to the true story of a group of young students who died under mysterious circumstances as ski tourists on the Dyatlov Pass in the northern Ural mountains in 1959. The exact circumstances of the mysterious deaths on Dyatlov Pass remain unexplained. Accompanying Matveeva’s heroine on her quest for the truth, therefore, the reader returns not only to a brutal past but is also drawn into discovering the truth behind the own life.

“The Dyatlov Pass could signal the start of a new literature just as In Cold Blood by Truman Capote once was for American prose… What I value in Matveeva’s novel is…. that she displays affection for the nine victims, lives with them and thus forces me to see one of them in the youngster sitting next to me in the cafe or in the underground… What I like most about reading this book, however, is the feeling of living through someone else’s tragedy because it is built into and woven into our own lives.”
DMITRI BYKOV

Roman Senchin – Rain in Paris

new sale

Macedonian language rights sold to Makedonika Litera

The sincerity and accuracy of Roman Senchin, the attention to detail in his novel RAIN IN PARIS create the vivid and truthful image of a forty-year-old man and his life in the Russian province. The hero and the reader with him become gradually clear: Without understanding the past, people have no future.

«“Rain in Paris“ is an extraordinarily graceful novel for all the details of everyday life. And with all the acute socio-political content a thoroughly philosophical text.» PAVEL BASINSKI