'They were all the same, communists, Nazis, parents, church, book reviews, features section, editorial, revolutionary struggle, Baader-Meinhof, capital, television, Club Voltaire, pacifism, guerrilla, Mao, Trotsky, Red Student Action, the underground scene and Germania Security. They were all part of the same idea, they knew how things ought to be, they had a monopoly on consciousness, love, human happiness.'In Raw Material Jörg Fauser casts an eye over the times he lived ...

“Prose that penetrates the reader’s mind like speed, fast paced, without an ounce of fat.”—WeltwocheHe’s found five pounds of top--quality Peruvian cocaine in a suit-case. Pur-sued by the police and drug traffickers the luckless Blum falls prey to the frenzied paranoia of the cocaine addict and dealer. This is a fast-paced thriller written with acerbic humour, a hardboiled evocation of drug-fuelled existence and a penetrating observation of those at the edge of German society....

Several years after emigrating from the USSR, the author discovers the battered suitcase he had brought with him gathering dust at the back of a wardrobe. As he opens the suitcase, the seemingly undistinguished items he finds inside take on a riotously funny life of their own as Dovlatov inventories the circumstances under which he acquired them. A poplin shirt evokes the bittersweet story of courtship and marriage, a pair of boots calls up the hilarious conclusion to an official banquet, ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAn extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and...

No one in their right mind travels across Siberia in the middle of winter in a modified Russian jeep, with only a CD player (which breaks on the first day) for company. But Jacek Hugo–Bader is no ordinary traveler.As a fiftieth birthday present to himself, Jacek Hugo–Bader sets out to drive from Moscow to Vladivostok, traversing a continent that is two and a half times bigger than America, awash with bandits, and not always fully equipped with roads.But if ...

**Now in one volume—the first three novels in Philip Kerr’s New York Times bestselling historical mystery series starring hard-boiled detective Bernie Gunther...“A Chandleresque knight errant caught in insane historical surroundings. Bernie walks down streets so mean that nobody can stay alive and remain truly clean.”—John Powers, Fresh Air (NPR)**Ex-policeman Bernie Gunther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin. But then he went free...

**SHORTLISTED for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for FictionAn intense psychological drama that echoes sophisticated entertainments like Gorky Park and The Talented Mr. Ripley.**Nick Platt is a British lawyer working in Moscow in the early 2000s—a place where the cascade of oil money, the tightening grip of the government, the jostling of the oligarchs, and the loosening of Soviet social mores have led to a culture where corruption, decadence, violence, and bet...

A funny, uplifting and life-affirming tale of grumpiness perfect if you loved books like Eleanor Oliphont is Completely Fine,Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry or Ruth Hogan's The Keeper Of Lost ThingsMaybe there's a little grump in all of us . . .The Grump, at eighty years old, is more focused on death than life; building his own coffin and keen to write his will in ink - who can trust technology, after all? - he knows that every...

***As heard on NPR’s All Things Considered*“Utterly original.” —The New York Times Book Review“Mixing bold journalism with bolder allegories, Mr. Szabłowski teaches us with witty persistence that we must desire freedom rather than simply expect it.” —Timothy Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny and The Road to UnfreedomAn incisive, humorous, and heartbreaking account of people in formerly Communist coun...

Miljenko Jergovic’s remarkable début collection of stories, Sarajevo Marlboro – winner of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize – earned him wide acclaim throughout Europe. Croatian by birth, Jergovic ? spent his childhood in Sarajevo and chose to remain there throughout most of the war. A dazzling storyteller, he brings a profoundly human, razor-sharp understanding of the fate of the city’s young Muslims, Croats, and Serbs with a subterranean humor and profoundly personal vision. Their off...

Diane Armstrong's bestselling fictional debutA mother's silence, a village with a terrible secret, and an Australian woman who travels to Poland to uncover the truth ... When forensic dentist Halina Shore arrives in Nowa Kalwaria to take part in a war crimes investigation, she finds herself at the centre of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. What she does not realise is that she has also embarked on a confronting personal journey. Inspired by a ...

The harrowing story of a woman who escaped famine and terror in North Korea, not once but twice.‘A gripping, suspenseful and cathartic memoir that tells a story of pain and perseverance and makes the moral case for asylum.’ David Lammy MPNorth Korea is an open-air prison from which there is no escape. Only a handful of men and women have succeeded.Jihyun Park is one of these rare survivors. Twice she left the land of the ‘socialist ...