It felt like the slipknot on a rope round my chest was being tightened without pity Trouble is the last thing Albert needs. Travelling back to his childhood home on Christmas Eve to mourn his mother's death, he finds the loneliness and nostalgia of his Parisian quartier unbearable...Until, that evening, he encounters a beautiful, seemingly innocent woman at a brasserie, and his spirits are lifted. Still, ...

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week It's as if they're made for each other. Two men, both falling, but holding each other up for a time. Ostend, 1936: the Belgian seaside town is playing host to a coterie of artists, intellectuals and madmen, who find themselves in limbo while Europe gazes into an abyss of fascism and war. Among them is Stefan Zweig, a man in crisis: his German publisher has shunned him, his m...

'The time provides the pictures, I merely speak the words to go with them, and it will not be so much my own story I tell as that of an entire generation - our unique generation, carrying a heavier burden of fate than almost any other in the course of history.' During his lifetime, Stefan Zweig's (1881-1942) works were immensely popular and widely translated. In the decades after his death, he was largely f...

Lviv, Lwow, Lvov, Lemberg. Known by a variety of names, the City of Lions is now in western Ukraine. Situated in different countries during its history, it is a city located along the fault-lines of Europe's history. City of Lions presents two essays, written more than half a century apart - but united by one city. Jozef Wittlin's sensual and lyrical paean to his Lwow, written in exile, is a deep cry of l...

The writer and satirist Teffi was a literary sensation in Russia until war and revolution forced her to leave her country for ever. Memories is her blackly funny and heartbreaking account of her final, frantic journey into exile across Russia-travelling by cart, freight train and rickety steamer-and the 'ordinary and unheroic' people she encounters. From refugees setting up camp on a dockside to a singer de...

Follow Hermes on 100 unforgettable journeys through the world of Greek mythology Hermes is determined to have adventures from the very moment of his unusual birth. With his tumbling brown curls and cheerful fearlessness, he charms his fellow gods: mighty Apollo, mournful Artemis, beautiful Aphrodite, and even the king of the immortals himself, Zeus. Carried by his winged sandals, Hermes travels all over his...

"It is impossible to look at the world the same way after reading Babel" FT Odessa was a uniquely Jewish city, and the stories of Isaac Babel - a Jewish man, writing in Russian, born in Odessa - uncover its tough underbelly. Gangsters, prostitutes, beggars, smugglers: no one escapes the pungent, sinewy force of Babel's pen. From the tales of the magnetic cruelty of Benya Krik - infamous mob boss, and one ...

Millions of people in a nation are necessary for a single genius to arise, millions of tedious hours must pass before a truly historic shooting star of humanity appears in the sky. Five vivid dramatizations of some of the most pivotal episodes in human history, from the Discovery of the Pacific to the composition of the Marseillaise, bringing the past to life in brilliant technicolor. Contents: Forewo...

100 years since the Russian Revolution: the 20th century's greatest Russian writers respond 'This is the last of you, old world - soon we'll smash you to bits.' The passionate voices of radicals, dreamers, workers, aristocrats, satirists and romantics fill these electrifying poems and prose pieces, written between 1917 and 1919 in the full tumult of the Russian Revolution. From apocalyptic visions to hea...

Winner of an English PEN Award 'He is not a good writer, thank goodness. He is a great one' Jonathan Safran Foer A gripping novel about an unusual family's breakdown, set in 1950s-60s South America Loosely based on real events, Affections tells the story of the eccentric, fascinating Ertl family, headed by the egocentric and extraordinary Hans, once Leni Riefenstahl's famous cameraman and Rommel's 'perso...

A new collection of Teffi's best autobiographical non-fiction writings Ranging from portraits of Rasputin and Lenin to observations on the Russian Revolution, and from profiles of cultural figures to moving domestic scenes, this short collection includes writings by the inimitable Teffi never before published in English. Everything is here - politics, society, art and literature, love and family life - and...

A selection of the finest stories by this female Chekhov Teffi's genius with the short form made her a literary star in pre-revolutionary Russia, beloved by Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny - a wry, scathing observer of society - she is also capable, as capable even as Chekhov, of miraculous subtl...

"Beware of Pity is the most exciting book I have ever read...a feverish, fascinating novel" Anthony Beevor, Sunday Telegraph An extract of this book was chosen by Kazuo Ishiguro and included in the 2012 World Book Night edition of Remains of the Day An almost unbearably tense and powerful tale of unrequited love and the danger of pity. In 1913 a young second lieutenant discovers the terrible danger of pity....

A highly contagious book virus, a literary society and a Snow Queen-like disappearing author 'She came to realise that under one reality there's always another. And another one under that.' Only very special people are chosen by children's author Laura White to join 'The Society', an elite group of writers in the small town of Rabbit Back. Now a tenth member has been selected: Ella, literature teacher an...

You can put the gloves on the shelf but it takes a long time to wash their smell from your knuckles. The writing's on the wall for Harry Kvist. Once a notorious boxer, he now spends his days drinking, and his nights chasing debts amongst the pimps, prostitutes and petty thieves of 1930s Stockholm. When women can't satisfy him, men can. But one biting winter's night he pays a threatening visit to a debtor na...

"If you give anything to a Norwegian (old meat tins are always thankfully received), he will give your hand a silent grip more expressive than many words"

A Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year 'Fans of The Letter for the King will be delighted with its sequel' Sunday Times 'Action-packed drama' Daily Mail One of the King's most trusted knights has vanished in the snow, so young Sir Tiuri and his best friend Piak must journey into the shadowy heart of the forest to find him. The Wild Wood is a place of mysteries, rumours and whispered tales. ...

A MYSTERY NO ONE CAN SOLVE The Vanishings started without warning. People disappearing into thin air - just piles of clothes left behind. Each day, thousands gone without a trace. A BABY NO ONE WANTED Max was abandoned in a bookshop and grows up haunted by memories of his parents. Only he can solve the mystery of the Vanishings. A SECRET THAT COULD SAVE THE FUTURE To find the answers, Max must leave thi...

Jacob has uncovered the doorway to another world, hidden behind a mirror. It is a place of dark magic and enchanted objects, scheming dwarves and fearsome ogres, fairies born from water and men born from stone. Here, he hunts for treasure and seeks adventure in the company of Fox - a beautiful, shape-shifting girl, who guides and guards him. But now Jacob's younger brother has followed him into the mirror...