Pushkin Press

In a small town in western Nigeria, four young brothers - the youngest is nine, the oldest fifteen - use their strict father's absence from home to go fishing at a forbidden local river. They encounter a dangerous local madman who predicts that the oldest brother will be killed by another. This prophesy breaks their strong bond and unleashes a tragic chain of events of almost mythic proportions. Passionate...

As Europe faced its darkest days, Stefan Zweig was a passionate voice for tolerance, peace and a world without borders. In these moving, ardent essays, speeches and articles, composed before and during the Second World War, one of the twentieth century's greatest writers mounts a defence of European unity against terror and brutality.These haunting lost messages, all appearing in English for the first time ...

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...

"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 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...

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...

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...

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...

Hungarian Antal Szerb is best known in the West as the author of three extraordinary novels, most notably Journey by Moonlight (1937), and a highly entertaining study of the Ancient Regime in France: The Queen's Necklace (1942).

The third book in Cornelia Funke's internationally bestselling Reckless series After a perilous encounter with an Alder Elf, Jacob must journey into the enchanted Mirrorworld once again. Together with Fox, his beautiful shapeshifting friend, Jacob has no choice but to follow his brother on the trail of the Dark Fairy, who has fled deep into the East: to a land of folklore, Cossacks, spies, time-eating wit...

A wickedly funny and life-affirming coming-of-age roadtrip story - winner of France's biggest prize for teen and YA fiction. Mireille, Astrid and Hakima have just been voted the three ugliest girls in school by their classmates on Facebook. But does that mean they're going to sit around crying about it? Well, maybe a little, but not for long! Climbing onto their bikes, the friends set off on a summer ...

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 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. ...

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 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...

Winner of the Newbery Medal and Honor: a heartwarming tale of one mouse's struggle to go home, by the author of Shrek! Abel has been happily married to Amanda for over a year. He has a comfortable home, an allowance from his mother, and no reason to worry. But one summer afternoon, a sudden storm blows away Amanda's scarf. Abel rushes after it - and is swept away by the wind. When he finally comes to rest...