Download or read book Red Star Tales written by Yvonne Howell and published by Russian Life Books. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a century, most of the science fiction produced by the world’s largest country has been beyond the reach of Western readers. This new collection aims to change that, bringing a large body of influential works into the English orbit. A scientist keeps a severed head alive, and the head lives to tell the tale… An explorer experiences life on the moon, in a story written six decades before the first moon landing... Electrical appliances respond to human anxieties and threaten to crash the electrical grid… Archaeologists discover strange powers emanating from a Central Asian excavation site… A teleporting experiment goes awry, leaving a subject to cope with a bizarre sensory swap… A boy discovers the explosive truth of his father’s “antiseptic” work, stamping out dissent on distant worlds… The last 100 years in Russia have seen an astonishing diversity and depth of literary works in the science fiction genre, by authors with a dizzying array of styles and subject matter. This volume brings together 18 such works, translated into English for the first time, spanning from path-breaking, pre-revolutionary works of the 1890s, through the difficult Stalinist era, to post-Soviet stories published in the 1980s and 1990s.

Download or read book Moscow Noir written by Natalia Smirnova and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Authors whose dark take on humanity would be familiar to the likes of Cornell Woolrich and Jim Thompson. Story after story offers haunting images.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review The more you watch Moscow, the more it looks like a huge chameleon that keeps changing its face—and it isn’t always pretty. Following Akashic Books’ international success with London Noir, Delhi Noir, Paris Noir, and others, the Noir series explores this fabled and troubled city’s darkest recesses. Moscow Noir features stories by: Alexander Anuchkin, Igor Zotov, Gleb Shulpyakov, Vladimir Tuchkov, Anna Starobinets, Vyacheslav Kuritsyn, Sergei Samsonov, Alexei Evdokimov, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Maxim Maximov, Irina Denezhkina, Dmitry Kosyrev, Andrei Khusnutdinov, and Sergei Kuznetsov. “Sordid crimes, gangsters and other underworld characters, sometimes supernatural themes, and a hefty body count . . . The best stories in the collection have some reverberations of a hoary past on the everyday life of a neighborhood . . . It is hard to over-emphasize the power of the locations described in some of these stories.” —MostlyFiction Book Reviews “This anthology is an attempt to turn the tourist Moscow of gingerbread and woodcuts, of glitz and big money, inside out.” —Bookslut “I am particularly struck by how it is the shortest stories here that seem the most fresh, bold and interesting. There we see often impressionistic touches in the prose or plotting and some really impressive exploration of theme. In particular, I would recommend ‘In the New Development’ and ‘The Point of No Return’ as highlights.” —Mysteries Ahoy!

Download or read book The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas written by Dmitry Chen and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in Russia's acclaimed Silk Road Trilogy, available in English for the first time, is full of mystery, memorable characters, and nonstop adventure. In the heart of the world, where empires collide, Nanidat Maniakh, a dashing trader, is enjoying the good life as head of a powerful silk dynasty. Yet Fate has other plans: Nanidat's world is suddenly torn asunder by murder and revolution, and the fate of his homeland hangs in the balance. Overnight, this able merchant must become a cunning warrior and spy, while eluding assassins, negotiating with kings, and pursuing a long-lost love. This thrilling and rich historical thriller, set in 749 CE—in the part of the world we now know as Iran, Iraq, and Central Asia—vividly re-creates a lost world, yet its passions and conflicts are entirely relevant to the present day.

Download or read book The Secret History of the Mongol Queens written by Jack Weatherford and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating romp through the feminine side of the infamous Khan clan” (Booklist) by the author featured in Echoes of the Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan “Enticing . . . hard to put down.”—Associated Press The Mongol queens of the thirteenth century ruled the largest empire the world has ever known. The daughters of the Silk Route turned their father’s conquests into the first truly international empire, fostering trade, education, and religion throughout their territories and creating an economic system that stretched from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Yet sometime near the end of the century, censors cut a section about the queens from the Secret History of the Mongols, and, with that one act, the dynasty of these royals had seemingly been extinguished forever, as even their names were erased from the historical record. With The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, a groundbreaking and magnificently researched narrative, Jack Weatherford restores the queens’ missing chapter to the annals of history.

Download or read book The Caliph s Splendor written by Benson Bobrick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caliph’s Splendor is a revelation: a history of a civilization we barely know that had a profound effect on our own culture. While the West declined following the collapse of the Roman Empire, a new Arab civilization arose to the east, reaching an early peak in Baghdad under the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Harun is the legendary caliph of The Thousand and One Nights, but his actual court was nearly as magnificent as the fictional one. In The Caliph’s Splendor, Benson Bobrick eloquently tells the little-known and remarkable story of Harun’s rise to power and his rivalries with the neighboring Byzantines and the new Frankish kingdom under the leadership of Charlemagne. When Harun came to power, Islam stretched from the Atlantic to India. The Islamic empire was the mightiest on earth and the largest ever seen. Although Islam spread largely through war, its cultural achievements were immense. Harun’s court at Baghdad outshone the independent Islamic emirate in Spain and all the courts of Europe, for that matter. In Baghdad, great works from Greece and Rome were preserved and studied, and new learning enhanced civilization. Over the following centuries Arab and Persian civilizations made a lasting impact on the West in astronomy, geometry, algebra (an Arabic word), medicine, and chemistry, among other fields of science. The alchemy (another Arabic word) of the Middle Ages originated with the Arabs. From engineering to jewelry to fashion to weaponry, Arab influences would shape life in the West, as they did in the fields of law, music, and literature. But for centuries Arabs and Byzantines contended fiercely on land and sea. Bobrick tells how Harun defeated attempts by the Byzantines to advance into Asia at his expense. He contemplated an alliance with the much weaker Charlemagne in order to contain the Byzantines, and in time Arabs and Byzantines reached an accommodation that permitted both to prosper. Harun’s caliphate would weaken from within as his two sons quarreled and formed factions; eventually Arabs would give way to Turks in the Islamic empire. Empires rise, weaken, and fall, but during its golden age, the caliphate of Baghdad made a permanent contribution to civilization, as Benson Bobrick so splendidly reminds us.

Download or read book Other Russias written by Victoria Lomasko and published by Particular Books. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a renowned graphic artist and activist, an incredible portrait of life in Russia today 'Victoria Lomasko's gritty, street-level view of the great Russian people masterfully intertwines quiet desperation with open defiance. Her drawings have an on-the-spot immediacy that I envy. She is one of the brave ones' - Joe Sacco, author of Palestine What does it mean to live in Russia today? What is it like to grow up in a forgotten city, to be a migrant worker or to grow old and seek solace in the Orthodox church? For the past eight years, graphic artist and activist Victoria Lomasko has been travelling around Russia and talking to people as she draws their stories. She spent time in dying villages where schoolteachers outnumber students; she stayed with sex workers in the city of Nizhny Novgorod; she went to juvenile prisons and spoke to kids who have no contact with the outside world; and she attended every major political rally in Moscow. The result is an extraordinary portrait of Russia in the Putin years -- a country full of people who have been left behind, many of whom are determined to fight for their rights and for progress against impossible odds. Empathetic, honest, funny, and often devastating, Lomasko's portraits show us a side of Russia that is hardly ever seen.

Download or read book Curious Creatures in Zoology written by John Ashton and published by . This book was released on 1890 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Kane Chronicles The Book Two The Throne of Fire written by Rick Riordan and published by Disney Electronic Content. This book was released on 2011-05-03 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exciting second installment of the three-book series, Carter and Sadie, offspring of the brilliant Egyptologist Dr. Julius Kane, embark on a worldwide search for the Book of Ra, but the House of Life and the gods of chaos are determined to stop them.

Download or read book Seven Pillars of Wisdom written by Thomas Edward Lawrence and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry written by Robert Chandler and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enchanting collection of the very best of Russian poetry, edited by acclaimed translator Robert Chandler together with poets Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, poetry's pre-eminence in Russia was unchallenged, with Pushkin and his contemporaries ushering in the 'Golden Age' of Russian literature. Prose briefly gained the high ground in the second half of the nineteenth century, but poetry again became dominant in the 'Silver Age' (the early twentieth century), when belief in reason and progress yielded once more to a more magical view of the world. During the Soviet era, poetry became a dangerous, subversive activity; nevertheless, poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova continued to defy the censors. This anthology traces Russian poetry from its Golden Age to the modern era, including work by several great poets - Georgy Ivanov and Varlam Shalamov among them - in captivating modern translations by Robert Chandler and others. The volume also includes a general introduction, chronology and individual introductions to each poet. Robert Chandler is an acclaimed poet and translator. His many translations from Russian include works by Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolay Leskov, Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov, while his anthologies of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and Russian Magic Tales are both published in Penguin Classics. Irina Mashinski is a bilingual poet and co-founder of the StoSvet literary project. Her most recent collection is 2013's Ophelia i masterok [Ophelia and the Trowel]. Boris Dralyuk is a Lecturer in Russian at the University of St Andrews and translator of many books from Russian, including, most recently, Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry (2014).

Download or read book Ulysses written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Limits and Renewals written by Rudyard Kipling and published by House of Stratus. This book was released on 2009-01-02 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Limits and Renewals, Kipling's last collection of short stories, was written shortly after the death of his only son. Dark and penetrating in tone, these are brilliant portraits of a soul in torment with some welcome relief coming in the tales of 'Aunt Ellen' and 'The Miracle of Saint Jubanus'.

Download or read book All the Shah s Men written by Stephen Kinzer and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2004-08-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full-length account of the CIA's coup d'etat in Iran in 1953—a covert operation whose consequences are still with us today. Written by a noted New York Times journalist, this book is based on documents about the coup (including some lengthy internal CIA reports) that have now been declassified. Stephen Kinzer's compelling narrative is at once a vital piece of history, a cautionary tale, and a real-life espionage thriller.

Download or read book The Waverley Novels written by Walter Scott and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fearful Majesty written by Benson Bobrick and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ivan the Terrible - the name evokes the legend of a cruel and dangerously insane tyrant. Fearful Majesty explores that legend and exposes the man, his nature, and his time. This acclaimed biography of one of Russia's most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan's reign. Ivan IV oversaw huge conquests of neighboring lands, the creation of a national church, and Russia's emergence as a world power. Arrogant, handsome, a gifted orator and theologian, Ivan was well educated but cruel, profoundly egotistical yet cowardly, scarred by childhood terrors. He was also the Russian ruler whose policies first cast Russia in the role of "Evil Empire" to the West. Throughout his reign, Ivan's unbalanced genius erupted in a tyranny so violent that it threatened to destroy his bloodline, his court, his church, his country.

Download or read book Davai the Russians and Their Vodka written by Edwin Trommelen and published by . This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, he offers up an appropriately complex and rich portrait.

Download or read book Murder and the Muse written by Alexei Bayer and published by . This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: KGB Chief Yuri Andropov himself has tapped Senior Detective Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso's wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, dredging up long-forgotten histories from the Civil War, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead. Yet Matyushkin - as relentless and gut-driven as ever - won't be stopped, even if it means taking on his partner, the KGB, and a ghost from decades past. In this third installment in the Matyushkin Case Files, Bayer is in top form, painting a vivid picture not just of life in 1960s Moscow, but of connected events half a century before, when the Soviet regime was being twisted and shaped by war and revolution. A page-turning mystery rich in historical detail and compelling characters.