It should come as no surprise,” writes Vyacheslav Pyetsukh at the beginning of The New Moscow Philosophy, “that where literature goes life follows, that Russians not only write what they live but in part live what they write…”

It is the great, cruel paradox of World War II in Russia that heinous, unanswered crimes coexisted with truly heroic, astonishing human achievement. That – be it out of fear or love of the Motherland or self-defense – Soviets fought so bravely to defend a system that treated them like cattle, confiscating from them the land, the bread and the peace that the Revolution had allegedly been all about, shipping them and their relatives off to Siberian labor camps, sentencing soldiers unfortunate enough to have been captured in war into “penal battalions.”

Today, Herbert Hoover – the 31st president of the United States (1929-1933) – is probably most associated with the onset and deepening of the Great Depression. Few know that prior to his presidency he was a successful international mining engineer (and had some lucrative investments in Russia before the Revolution), and later headed up the ARA (American Relief Administration), designed to deliver needed foreign aid to Belgium in the aftermath of World War I. 

I love a good thriller, and so was excited to get this review copy in the mail last month. The premise is interesting, the characters mainly believable, and the well-layered plot drives you along, just not as intensely as I would have liked. 

This amazing collection of fiction and non-fiction by one of the 20th century's most talented and most overlooked writers re-demonstrates that Grossman was a meticulous documentarian of the Russian soul.

We are EXCITED to announce that Anne O. Fisher's translation of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov's classic novel, The Little Golden Calf, which we published in 2009, has received the 2010 AATSEEL Book Award for Best Translation into English.

The Louisville Courier-Journal has a nice feature this morning on Anne Fisher, the translator and driving force behind our new translation of The Little Golden Calf. It talks about how the book went in and out of favor with the Soviet regime, and how Anne was inspired to bring the work out in English because it had been so instrumental in forging her own understanding of all things Russian.