ELKOST International literary agency - MEMORIAL human rights group and Ales Bialiatski got the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, Russian group Memorial and Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties.

We would like to remind that along its other activities, Memorial conducts research into the history of political repressions in USSR and Russia, and publicizes the findings in books, articles, exhibitions, museums, and websites of its member organisations.

TITLES BY MEMORIAL:

Ivan Chistyakov's DIARY OF A GULAG PRISON GUARD

Irina Sherbakova's ONLY A MIRACLE COULD SAVE US

AGNES: recorded oral memories of Agnes Mironova

My Father's Letters

OST: A Lifelong Curse. Fate of Ostarbeiters during and after the WWII in documents, letters, and recorded oral memories

Featured titles

Body of the Soul, collected stories by Ludmila Ulitskaya (2019)

Rights sold: Croatia - FRAKTURA, Finland - SILTALA, France - GALLIMARD, Germany - HANSER, Greece - AGRA, Hungary - MAGVETO, Italy - LA NAVE DI TESEO, Serbia - ARHIPELAG, Slovenia - SLOVART, Russia - AST, World English - Yale University Press (Margellos)

Ulitskaya's new collection was subtitled by the author as 'borderline' short stories. In all cultures and religions, the very concept of borderline, of boundary, of some kind of restriction is inherent for one's consciousness and life experience. Over a lifetime, people constantly deal with multiple limitations, internal or external, real or imagined. These boundaries can “expand”, “be effaced”, “crossed”, “demand respect”, some of them we set for ourselves, and others are set by states, societies, or traditions. It is philosophical and humanistic interpretation of this concept that Ulitskaya writes about in her book.

The book feature two cycles of short stories. In the first one, My Lady-Friends, the key motive of Ulitskaya's narrative is love, perhaps the only device capable of effacing any boundaries between people. Protagonists of these stories recover missing part of their soul and gain strength necessary for life with a help of love manifesting itself in different forms and shapes: physical love, maternal love, late love, unexpected love, adoration, allegiance, sympathy, affection...

In the second cycle, On The Body Of The Soul, Ulitskaya approaches the innermost boundary - the boundary of life, or rather of physical existence of our bodies. Is there a line dividing life and death? Or is death the limit of life? And what is there, beyond our physical existence? Ulitskaya's protagonists are caught in those crucial moments of their lives when physical and metaphysical is almost inseparable.

We know much more about human body than about the soul. Indeed, no one can draw up a map of the soul. All we can is just somehow catch, to glimpse into a boundary strip, into that zone separating existence and non-existence. There, near the border as we approach it, such vibrations begin, such subtle details are revealed that it is almost impossible to give them a wording in our beautiful, but limited language. A risky, very dangerous approach. Still, that space attracts to itself the further you live, the stronger. -- Ludmila Ulitskaya

The Careerist, a novel by Józef Mackiewicz

Original Polish title: Karierowicz

Rights status: available for all languages less Polish.

Published by: Polish - Kontra

A psychological novel, without political references, even though the story begins in the later stages of the 1920 Polish-Soviet war.