Our author and friend Marietta Chudakova has passed away today, November 21, 2021, in Moscow, Russia, due to complications caused by COVID-19.
Our deepest consolences to her daughter Maria, and to all her friends and amirers.
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.
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.
Aquarius over Odessa, a novel by Ilya Mitrofanov (1992)
Rights sold: Germany - Volk und Welt, Spain - Lumen
"Unfortunately, AQUARIUS OVER ODESSA will remain the author's final work; the tragic accident that took his life in 1994 has deprived Russian literature of one of its more promising talents." -- Joseph P. Mozur Jr., World Literature Today
The astrological sign of change, Aquarius, bodes neither peace nor goodwill for Mitrofanov's blue-collar hero Semyon Stavraki, a deep-sea diver working in the rough and bustling port of Odessa. Stavraki, an orphan raised in the ruins of postwar Odessa, claims the city as his mother and proudly credits her with having taught him honesty, respect, and tolerance for others. Nevertheless, Stavraki's story illustrates how bad things can befall good people, and his fortunes take a disastrous turn precisely when the star sign appears over the city.
The first-person narrative opens with Stavraki's homecoming from a prison camp in the north...
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