Aleksei Ivanov – Le Dernier Afghan – in French

new publication

pocket book edition published by Rivages/ Noir

After the TRANSLATION AWARD Inalco/Vo-Vf 2023 for Raphaëlle Pache for bringing Aleksei Ivanov’s thrilling social drama NENASTE – LE DERNIER AFGHAN into French language, the book became more attention and éditions Rivages/Noir now published a pocket book version.

The novel uses a thriller plot to describe the developement of Russian society from the 90ies into the early 2010s. Ex-Afghanistan combats form a first mafia group that still obeys rules of comradeship and „honesty“ and brings kind of stability to a provincial town. But slowly they are pushed aside by other mendacious and „dishonest“ guys who are seeking their private financial profit only. A late revenge of one of the old „honest“ guys brings the situation to escalation.

Dmitri Danilov – Sasha, hello – in Bulgarian

new publication

Bulgarian edition published by Panorama Publishers

The 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. 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.

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

«Description of a City got under my skin and into my livers…» LIZA HAYDEN

Darya Bobyleva – Village at the Edge of Noon – in English

new publication

English translation published by Angry Robot

Angry Robot/ London has published Darya Bobyleva’s horror novel VYURKI in the translation by Ilona Chavasse. The novel turns out to be a good example of an action-horror thriller with an obligatory love spell… then we finally get to know where all these creatures are from, but that doesn‘t make it any easier – by this point the residents of the village are already so crazy, that they are willing to kill each other. Vyurki reads both as a parable about the current state of mind and morals in a world gone mad by all sorts of civilizational and ecological pres- sures, as well as a parable about the basic evil woven into every single human being.

«Darya Bobyleva has the talent of a sorceress in literature – she enters the dark memory of the most ordinary apartments, she senses troubles in familiar relationships, she knows the terrible secrets of average big-city families. The novel „Vyurki“ is the culmination of her mystical forays into the wrong side of everyday life.» VALERIA PUSTOVAYA

Anna Starobinets – Green Pastures for Spain

new sale

Short story GREEN PASTURES in horror anthology

Almost all works by Anna Starobinets are being published in Spanish translation. GREEN PASTURES is one of the short stories from the collection ICARUS GLAND.

The short stories in ICARUS GLAND are dystopian and dangerously border on reality, where science is merely an excuse to dissect its protagonists and reveal its inner workings.

Vladimir Sharov – The Rehearsals for Hebrew language

new sale

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

new representation

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

 new representation

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

new publication

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

new publication

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.