Featured titles
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The Three Fat Men, a novel by Yuri Olesha
Rights sold / Published by (rights may be available): Bulgaria - Hermes, China - Youth and Children Publishing Company, Czech Republic - Svět Sovětů, France - Éditions Hier et Aujourd'hui, Greece - Kedros, Hungary - Magvető, Móra, Italy - Einaudi, Japan - Kodansha, Poland - Książka i Wiedza, Romania - Editura Ion Creangă, English - Hesperus Press
The novel was written for both children and adults. It is a story set in an unknown land about an uprising led by the gunsmith Prospero. (The name is an allusion to the magician in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.) The novel has the didactic and schematic qualities of a fairy tale and is filled with unexpected metaphors and dexterously shifting points of view. In The Three Fat Men Olesha displays the same mastery of style present in Envy and his short stories.
Olesha's The Three Fat Men is of one of the finest, most overlooked works of Soviet-era literature. At once a peculiarly hilarious satire full of magic and whimsy, it is also a beautifully written work of literature, brimming with profound metaphors and brilliant turns of phrase. This is a "fairy tale" ostensibly written for children, but which will be even more appreciated by grown-ups. - Russian Life magazine
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Culture and Explosion by Yuri Lotman (NF)
Rights sold: Czech Republic - HOST, Spain - GEDISA
Originally published in Russian in 1992, a year before Lotman's death, Culture and Explosion puts forth a fundamental theory: the semiotics of culture. Proceeding from a model of communication, Lotman extends the work of the renowned Tartu-Moscow school that he founded, showing not only how culture can be observed and described, but also how it can be governed and guided. In fact, as Lotman demonstrates with copious examples, the modelling system of culture has an immeasurably strong influence on the way that humans experience "reality". As usual, Lotman's erudition is brought to bear on the theory of culture, and the book comprises a host of well-chosen illustrations from history, literature, art and right across the humanities.
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