Includes many poems used in Arseny's son's films (Andrei Tarkovsky). With a bibliography of both Arseny and Andrei Tarkovsky, and illustrations from Tarkovsky's movies.FROM THE INTRODUCTION:Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky was was born in June 1907 in Elizavetgrad, later named Kirovograd. He studied at the Academy of Literature in Moscow from 1925 to 1929, and also worked in the editorial office of the journal Gudok. He was well respected as a translator, especially of the Oriental classics, but was little known as a poet for most of his life, being unable to get any of his own work published during the Stalinist era. His poems did not begin to appear in book form until he was over fifty. His son, the film director Andrei Tarkovsky, made extensive use of his father's in some of his films, and certain of his diary entries indicate the esteem in which the poet was held in the Soviet Union towards the end of his life. An entry written after Andrei had given a talk at the Moscow Physical Institute in 1980, for instance, reproduces the following note from a member of the audience: 'An enormous number of people in this hall admire Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky as a great Russian poet. Please convey our respects to him.' One of the few recorded public appearances of Arseny Tarkovsky was at the funeral of Anna Akhmatova; he was one of three writers deputed to accompany her coffin from Domodedovo to Leningrad, and he read both at her funeral in Komarovo and at the first evening held in her memory in Moscow. He died in 1989 and is now beginning to be recognised as one of the many significant Russian poets of the twentieth century.From Ignatyevo Forest'The last leaves' embers in total immolationRise into the sky; this whole forestSeethes with irritation, just as we didThat last year we lived together.

    Amazing in its thematic range and stylistic breadth, his poetry "leaps continents and covers war and peace, intolerance and human striving . . . a passionate and essential edition of his collected poems" ( The New York Times).

    The books were featured on Russian and Ukrainian TV via interviews with their author.

    This satirical novel tells the story of the surgical transformation of a dog into a man, and is an obvious criticism of Soviet society, especially the new rich that arose after the Bolshevik revolution.

    According to Wikipedia: "Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev 1818 â€" 1883) was a Russian novelist and playwright. His novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction."

    When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.

    He brings to life his friends - now reduced to pieces of flesh - revisiting their first loves, their passion for rock music, their quests for martyrdom. And he immerses us in the intoxicating beauty of his homeland's mountains, blossoms and the flocks of migratory swallows that fill its skies.I Am a Chechen! is an intensely personal journey through the carnage of the war, exploring the pain, the challenge, and above all the meaning of being a Chechen.

    He has come to detest his boring job and the petty superior he must defer to; his marriage is falling apart; he feels betrayed by his friends, he disdains the young student who offers him the passion and sense of wonder he once derived from his wife; and he seems concerned only with his annual hunting trip which, he hopes, will restore a purpose and identity to his life. But events continue to frustrate him: his wife aborts the child who might have saved their relationship; the new apartment they have wrested from the grudging bureaucracy seems more a tomb than a home; and ultimately, suicide appears to be Zilov's only alternative. But, in the end, emboldened by vodka and defying the persistent bad weather, Zilov does go hunting for the will to live is stronger than the desire to give up, and hope remains, even in the gray sameness of an existence gone stale.

     Like the Arkady Renko novels of Martin Cruz Smith, Robert Littell's masterful Mother Russia transports readers back in time and behind the Iron Curtain to experience the extremes of Soviet society. Robespierre Pravdin is a black marketeer who prowls Moscow's streets and alleys hustling wristwatches. Wishing only to survive in a city suffocated by paranoia and schizophrenia, Robespierre manages to make a tidy profit and stay under the state's radar-until, one day, he meets the woman called "Mother Russia" and becomes ensnared in the Byzantine and profoundly dangerous game of politics. This is another darkly engrossing pageturner from the bestselling author of The Sisters and The Defection of A. J. Lewinter.

    a gem of a novel' Robert Dinsdale Moscow, 1932. Gareth Jones, a young Welsh reporter, arrives in the Soviet Union excited to see for himself how Josef Stalin is forging a new civilisation. He meets American and British journalists who acclaim Stalin’s great experiment – but when Jones witnesses people starving to death in Ukraine, his belief in the Soviet revolution is shattered. He must decide whether to report the truth or become just another useful idiot, saying only what the Communist secret police allow and smothering the evidence of his own eyes. In this special kind of hell, anyone could be an informer, and Jones knows his life will be at risk if he is even thought to be defying Stalin. And when the woman he loves falls under the suspicion of the secret police, everything Jones values is in danger. Can he reveal the terrible truth about the Ukrainian famine to the world, or will he be silenced forever? THE USEFUL IDIOT is the secret history of the first great Soviet lie – wrapped up in an electrifying novel perfect for readers of Robert Harris, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, John le Carré and Kate Atkinson. As Vladimir Putin rewrites the Nazi-Soviet pact and with the horrors of Chernobyl and the Cold War so recent, this thriller of fake news in 1932 is real storytelling of enormous significance. *** John Sweeney is an award-winning journalist and a former long-serving BBC reporter. He is the author of eleven books, including three novels: the 200,000-copy bestseller ELEPHANT MOON, another historical thriller based on true events, two modern-day political thrillers, COLD and ROAD, an investigation into the Church of Scientology, THE CHURCH OF FEAR, an account of his time spent undercover in North Korea, NORTH KOREA UNDERCOVER. He tweets from @johnsweeneyroar.

    

    They have become renowned for their visual excellence, which includes unparalleled photography, 3-D mapping, and specially commissioned cutaway illustrations. DK "Eyewitness Travel Guides" are the only guides that work equally well for inspiration, as a planning tool, a practical resource while traveling, and a keepsake following any trip. Each guide is packed with the up-to-date, reliable destination information every traveler needs, including extensive hotel and restaurant listings, themed itineraries, lush photography, and numerous maps.

    It is one of the great mysteries of our times. They would be found with missing eyes, even a missing tongue, crushed bones, and stripped of their clothes in minus 50 degree temperatures . Theories range from their being being murdered by the CIA to space aliens, to "Abominable Snowmen". This book explores this famous incident using a technique known as "Higher criticism" to explain their terrifying deaths. It provides hitherto unexplored answers and is now the leading source on the incident, debunking all previous explanations while pointing to eleven points of overwhelming evidence that tell us what really happened on this tragic night of horror.

    Whenever you play your favorite online game, beware: your mind might merge with the virtual world and dump its comatose host. Woe be to those stuck forever in Tetris! And still they're the lucky ones compared to those burning alive eternally within the scorched hulls of tank simulators. But some unfortunates - the handicapped and the terminally ill, shell-shocked army vets, wronged crime victims and other society misfits - choose to flee real life willingly, escaping to the limitless world of online sword and sorcery MMORPGs. Once a seasoned gamer and now a terminal cancer patient, Max grasps at this final chance to preserve his life and identity. So he goes for it - goes for the promise of immortality shared with a few trusty friends and the woman he loves. Together they roam the roads of AlterWorld and sample its agony and ecstasy born of absolute freedom.