Featured titles
-
The Witness, a novel by Ilya Mitrofanov (1993)
Rights sold: Germany - Volk und Welt, Italy - Isbn Edizioni, Spain - Lumen, Poland - Claroscuro
"This novel is intensely passionate, and rich in fresh images and patterns..." (Silvia Bambino, The Wanity Fair)
"The Witness" is the first-person narrative of the life story of a simple human being, a barber Fedor Petrovich, whose life's most intense and dramatic period was the incorporation of his native Bessarabia into the Soviet Union in 1940, accompanied by coercion from the new command structure, which affected social relationships and caused enormous suffering due to famine brought on both by prolonged drought and by mistakes in official planning and preparation.
Read more...
In the speck on the map called Kotlovina, the entire historical drama, starting with the so-called Soviet liberation from Romanian rule, was played out to its horrible end with very few survivors to live and tell about it.
The novel's success is based on the vivid and laconic presentation of its characters. "The Witness" projects the speech pattern of a simple, uneducated man. This style makes use of down-to-earth expressions, is unafraid of repetitions, takes notice of the simple things in life (of a person's outward appearance, of smells and fragrances, all very appropriate to a barber's profession), is not averse to rudeness in language and behavior, and above all is a stranger to all dissembling and pretense. The events told are viewed through the prism of recollection, which softens their horrible contours somewhat and which allows the theme of brotherhood to emerge and feelings of hatred to dissolve. Honesty and lack of pretense are the author's hallmark, and it is these features which characterize his artistic expression. -
Funeral Party, a novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya (1997)
Rights sold: Bulgaria - COLIBRI, China - Zhejiang Literature & Art, Croatia - VUKOVIC, Croatia – SYSPRINT, Denmark - GYLDENDAL, Estonia - TANAPAEV, Finland - TAMMI, France - GALLIMARD, Germany - VOLK UND WELT (LUCHTENHAND LUEBBE), Great Britain - VICTOR GOLLANZ (ORION MASS MARKET), Greece - EKDOSEIS KASTANIOTIS, Hungary - MAGVETO, Iran - Houpaa Books, Israel - HA KIBBUTZ, Italy - FRASSINELLI, Japan - Shinchosha, Korea - MARCO POLO, Macedonia - Publisher DOOEL, The Netherlands - DE GEUS, Portugal - RELOGIO D’AGUA, Romania - S.C HUMANITAS S.A, Slovakia - SLOVART, Spain - LUMEN RANDOM HOUSE, Sweden – BAZAR, ERSATZ, Turkey - ITHAKI, USA – SCHOCKEN, USA - KNOPF, World Arabic - AL MADA
August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all,
especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN?"A deft, economical portrait of an engaging set of characters whose behavior, though occasionally screwball, is never one-dimensional... Riotously funny—a quirky, tender
story..." (New York Times Book Review)
"…Smart and prickly book, one with echoes of Isaac Babel and Isaac Bashevis Singer and perhaps a dose of Samuel Beckett as well." (New York Times)
Read more...
"Beautiful, lyrical prose is the hallmark of this novel." (Library Journal)