September 03, 2022 Russian News Has Gotten Wacky Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian press has gone off the rails. Here's what they're saying.
August 30, 2022 Homophobia Codified The Russian state is preparing to pass new laws banning "gay propaganda" after a recent book led to public outrage.
August 18, 2022 Kremlin Cancels Culture A working group of the Russian State Duma has compiled a list of cultural figures who have denounced the war in Ukraine. They can either "repent" or quit their jobs.
Russian Rules From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.
Resilience ~ The Russian Version (Переживем) Call it resilience, grit, or just perseverance – it takes a special sort of person to have survived the last 100 years of Russian and Soviet history.
Woe From Wit (bilingual) One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.
The Samovar Murders The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
The Moscow Eccentric Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
How Russia Got That Way A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual) The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
Tolstoy Bilingual This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious.
Okudzhava Bilingual Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards.
Kashtanka – A Bilingual Reader A bilingual presentation of one of the great classics of Russian literature.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided.