Three short stories from the great Russian writer, including the title story, in which a thieving vagrant takes on a young, unwilling apprentice; "Twenty-six Men and A Girl," widely regarded as Gorky’s best short story, which describes how a wretched crew of bakery workers destroy their only source of joy; and the ill-fated romance, "Makar Chudra."

    But just before his début, his parents -- his father a famous playwright, and his mother a renowned opera singer -- are exposed for their political indiscretions and held under arrest. With World War II on the brink, and fearing that his own entrapment is not far behind, Alexeï flees to the countryside, assumes the identity of a Soviet soldier, and falls dangerously in love with a general officer's daughter. What follows is a two-decades-long journey through war and peace, love and betrayal, art and artifice -- a rare ensemble in the making of the music of a life.

    A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking businessmen struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoon--until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A woman working in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won't come out of the fitting room--and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her husband's features are beginning to slide around his face--to match her own.In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien--and, through it, find a way to liberation. The English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers.

    Limited to only 1500 copies.

    With an extreme right-wing cult in power, racial tensions have divided the country into the Varangians - those who consider themselves to be the original Aryan settlers of Russia - and the Khazars, the liberals and Jews driven out of Moscow by recent events. Morale has reached an all-time low as the brutality and pointlessness of the situation is becoming more and more apparent: what is left of the fighting now revolves around capturing and recapturing Degunino, a seemingly magical village with an abundance of pies, vodka and accommodating womenfolk. But there is also a third people - timid, itinerant and on the brink of extinction - who lay claim to Degunino and Russia as their homeland. Against this rich backdrop of events, "Living Souls" follows the lives of four couples struggling to escape the chaos and stupidity of the war around them: a teenage girl who adopts a homeless man, a poet turned general separated from his lover, a provincial governor in love with one of the natives, and a legendary military commander who is sleeping with the enemy. A wide-ranging work dealing with the ideas of language, power and national identity, "Living Souls" is a comic and thought-provoking novel with tremendous relevance to the present day.

    Andrei is a model Soviet citizen, a swaggeringly self-satisfied mogul of the food industry who intends to revolutionize modern life with mass-produced sausage. Nikolai is a loser. Finding him drunk in the gutter, Andrei gives him a bed for the night and a job as a gofer. Nikolai takes what he can, but that doesn't mean he's grateful. Griping, sulking, grovelingly abject, he despises everything Andrei believes in, even if he envies him his every breath.Producer and sponger, insider and outcast, master and man fight back and forth in the pages of Olesha's anarchic comedy. It is a contest of wills in which nothing is sure except the incorrigible human heart.Marian Schwartz's new English translation of Envy brilliantly captures the energy of Olesha's masterpiece.A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL

    Now at last, in “Let the Old Dreams Die,” the title story in this absolutely stunning collection, we get a glimpse of what happened next to the pair. Fans of Let the Right One In will have to read the story, which is destined to generate much word of mouth both among fans and online.“Let the Old Dreams Die” is not the only stunner in this collection. In "Final Processing," Lindqvist also reveals the next chapter in the lives of the characters he created in Handling the Undead. “Equinox” is a story of a woman who takes care of her neighbor’s house while they are away and readers will never forget what she finds in the house. Every story meets the very high standard of excellence and fright factor that Lindqvist fans have come to expect. Totally transcending genre writing, these are world class stories from possibly the most impressive horror writer writing today.

    What those writers brought to English-language literature was a wide variety of new ideas, styles, and ways of seeing the world. Yet times have changed, and how much do we even know about the richly diverse literature being written in Europe today?Best European Fiction 2010 is the inaugural installment of what will become an annual anthology of stories from across Europe. Edited by acclaimed Bosnian novelist and MacArthur “Genius-Award” winner Aleksandar Hemon, and with dozens of editorial, media, and programming partners in the U.S., UK, and Europe, the Best European Fiction series will be a window onto what’s happening right now in literary scenes throughout Europe, where the next Kafka, Flaubert, or Mann is waiting to be discovered.List of contributorsPreface: Zadie SmithIntroduction: Aleksandar HemonOrnela Vorpsi (Albania): from The Country Where No One Ever DiesAntonio Fian (Austria): from While SleepingPeter Terrin (Belgium: Dutch): from "The Murderer"Jean-Philippe Toussaint (Belgium: French): "Zidane's Melancholy"Igor Stiks (Bosnia): "At the Sarajevo Market"Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria): "And All Turned Moon"Neven Usumovic (Croatia): "Veres"Naja Marie Aidt (Denmark): "Bulbjerg"Elo Viiding (Estonia): "Foreign Women"Juhani Brander (Finland): from ExtinctionChristine Montalbetti (France): "Hotel Komaba Eminence" (with Haruki Murakami)George Konrád (Hungary): "Jeremiah's Terrible Tale"Steinar Bragi (Iceland): "The Sky Over Thingvellir"Julian Gough (Ireland: English): "The Orphan and the Mob"Ornaní Choileáin (Ireland: Irish): "Camino"Giulio Mozzi (AKA Carlo Dalcielo) (Italy): "Carlo Doesn't Know How to Read"Inga Abele (Latvia): "Ants and Bumblebees"Mathias Ospelt (Liechtenstein): "Deep In the Snow"Giedra Radvilaviciute˙ (Lithuania): "The Allure of the Text"Goce Smilevski (Macedonia): "Fourteen Little Gustavs"Stephan Enter (Netherlands): "Resistance"Jon Fosse (Norway): "Waves of Stone"Michal Witkowski (Poland): "Didi"Valter Hugo Mãe (Portugal): "dona malva and senhor josé ferreiro"Cosmin Manolache (Romania): "Three Hundred Cups"Victor Pelevin (Russia): "Friedmann Space"David Albahari (Serbia): "The Basilica in Lyon"Peter Kristúfek (Slovakia): from The PrompterAndrej Blatnik (Slovenia): from You Do Understand?Julián Ríos (Spain: Castilian): "Revelation on the Boulevard of Crime"Josep Fonalleras (Spain: Catalan): "Noir in Five Parts and an Epilogue"Peter Stamm (Switzerland): "Ice Moon"Deborah Levy (United Kingdom: England): from Swimming HomeAlasdair Gray (United Kingdom: Scotland): "The Ballad of Ann Bonny"Penny Simpson (United Kingdom: Wales): "Indigo's Mermaid"

    Exploring natural phenomena and the origins of the universe, these beloved tales relate complex scientific concepts to our common sensory, emotional, human world.Now, The Complete Cosmicomics brings together all of the cosmicomic stories for the first time. Containing works previously published in Cosmicomics, t zero, and Numbers in the Dark, this single volume also includes seven previously uncollected stories, four of which have never been published in translation in the United States. This “complete and definitive collection” (Evening Standard) reconfirms the cosmicomics as a crowning literary achievement and makes them available to new generations of readers.

    In Happy Moscow Platonov exposes the gulf between this premature triumphal­ism and the harsh reality of low living standards and even lower expectations. For in Stalin's ideal city there is no longer a place for those who do not fit the bright, shining image of the new men and women of the future. The heroine, Moscow Chestnova, is an Everywoman, both virgin and whore, who flits from man to man, fascinated by the brave new world supposedly taking shape around her. In a variety of styles ranging from the grotesque, to the sentimental and the absurd, Platonov lays bare the ways in which language itself has been debased, even borrowing slogans from Stalin's own speeches for comic effect.In an age of spin doctors and soundbites, this anarchic satire has as much resonance as ever.

    Concerns about society, gender and imperialism dovetail irresistibly with flights of speculative wonder. And with a kitchen sink in the corner of even her wildest stories, Suzuki reminds us that while society may be limitless, relationships remain impossible

    Understandably, their readers need to keep accessing these books at all cost and gather into groups around book-bearers, or, as they're called, librarians. Alexei, until now a loser, comes to collect an uncle's inheritance and unexpectedly becomes a librarian. He tells his extraordinary, unbelievable story.

    The prospect of a summer job as a tour guide at the Pushkin Hills Preserve offers him hope of regaining some balance in life as his wife makes plans to emigrate to the West with their daughter Masha, but during Alikhanov’s stay in the rural estate of Mikhaylovskoye, his life continues to unravel.Populated with unforgettable characters—including Alikhanov’s fellow guides Mitrofanov and Pototsky, and the KGB officer Belyaev—Pushkin Hills ranks among Dovlatov’s renowned works The Suitcase and The Zone as his most personal and poignant portrayal of the Russian attitude towards life and art.

    These stories are explorations of the extreme in human behaviour, where the bizarre chills the spine, and few authors can match Grabinski's depiction of seething sexual frenzy. The Dark Domain will introduce to English readers one of Europe's most important authors of literary fantasy.

    Ranging from the prophetic to the surreal, these stories demonstrate Stanislaw Lem's vast talent and remarkable ability to blend meaning and magic into a wholly entertaining and captivating work.