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Title
JUST PUBLISHED: Grigory Oster's Funny Math Problem Book in Estonia
Guzel Yakhina´s presentations and other events of the 2016 Lodnon Book Fair
JUST PUBLISHED: Maya Kuchesraya's Auntie Mina in Italy
JUST PUBLISHED: The House That... by Mariam Petrosyan in France
JUST PUBLISHED: Oleg Dorman's The Note in Latvia
JUST PUBLISHED: Why Italians Love to Talk about Food by Elena Kostioukovitch in Bulgaria
JUST PUBLISHED: Ludmila Ulitskaya's The Big Green Tent in Czech Republic
JUST PUBLISHED: Sasha Sokolov's A School For Fools in Turkey
Ludmila Ulitskaya in the USA, Jan.-Feb. 2016
JUST PUBLISHED: Ludmila Ulitskaya's Sincerely Yours, Shurik in Croatia
JUST PUBLISHED: Ludmila Ulitskaya's The Big Green Tent in Italy
JUST PUBLISHED: Józef Mackiewicz's Better Not to Talk Aloud in Lithuania
Guzel Yakhina´s Zuleikha wins the 2015 Big Book Award
JUST PUBLISHED: Sasha Sokolov's A School For Fools in the United States
JUST PUBLISHED: Ludmila Ulitskaya's The Big Green Tent in the United States

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Featured titles

The Role of the Reader, 1979

Rights sold: Russia - Symposium, Corpus

Baize-Covered Table with Decanter, a novel by Vladimir Makanin (1993)

Rights sold: China - LITZIAN, France - GALLIMARD, AWorld English - Readers International,

Winner of the 1993 Russian Booker Award

Baize-Covered Table with Decanter describes one man's psychological torture as he faces an impending visit to be interrogated at the Table for a perceived, minor infraction. Makanin describes in some detail each character present at the Table, their purpose, techniques, and psychology. He also descibes in flashbacks the physical torture of suspects in Soviet days past and the mental torture of some as they are forcibly drugged in state mental hospitals. The book contains a few sections with an adult material not appropriate for minors; one scene in particular describes the sexual abuse of a corpse and is really quite disturbing.

Makanin does a good job describing the moral corruption of Russian/Soviet society. Neighbor is turned against neighbor. Bribes and sexual favors are freely exchanged. Fear rules. It seems no one is immune to this societal degradation.

Baize-Covered Table leaves the reader with the impression that, although the Soviet torture methods may have diminished in recent years, psychological torture that breaks a person's spirit, mind, and body may persist... there will always be a Table in Russia.

"...it is all of Solzhenitsyn compressed into 144 pages" -- Kevin Tole, GoodReads