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Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Russia & Eastern Europe

• Russia
• Ukraine
• Baltic States
• Caucasus
• Central Asian Republics

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  There Once Lived a Woman who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  Scary Fairy Tales that are both comic and magical, from the under-appreciated Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, written in the late USSR. Dark as anything, deeply funny, and powerful. Each story is a short, 5-10 page burst of emotion, depression, black comedy and twisted endings. Not to be read in the dark. (This reviewer got through 4 stories on the tube one night before he had to sit down and play Angry Birds on his phone for 8 stops - still very much worth it though!)

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  The Milkman in the Night by Andrey Kurkov

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A new masterpiece from Ukranian novelist Andrey Kurkov, author of the cult classic Death and the Penguin. In The Milkman in the Night, there are more surreal and comic things happening- including a sleepwalker who tries to solve the mystery of his own nocturnal adventures, an unemployed sniffer-dog handler making a dangerous discovery, a single mother who provides breast milk for an unusual recipient, and a vengeful cat on the loose. All in all, there are some very strange goings-on in Kiev.

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  Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  An indispensable collection. Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gogol - all the greats are here, and their successors more than hold their own.

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  Poetry Of The Taliban by Alex Stick Von Linschoten

  Price: £14.99    Add to Basket

  This is the first collection in English of poetry inspired by and inspiring the Taliban. Most Taliban fighters are Pashtuns, a people who cherish their poetic tradition, and poetry is used in battle. Divided into traditional, pre-1970's poetry, and later work inspired by the impact of the Soviet-, and later Western-Afghan conflicts, this collection illuminates the psyche of the Taliban far better than most attempts.

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  The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Set in the decades before the rise of the Taliban, Ahmad's breathtaking stories explore the customs and cruelties of a culture seldom portrayed from the inside. A Pakistani boy, known as the wandering falcon, spends his life moving between remote tribal areas on the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tender and devastating.

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  The Inland Sea by K. J. Orr

  Price: £2.99    Add to Basket

  Early one morning, two boys set out across a frozen lake. This beautifully told story is a small and finely-wrought epic, set in a remote part of Russia. A deeply touching tale of brotherhood, bravery and the wild dreams of childhood, this beautiful little book is published in a special limited edition by Daunt Books.
  Click here to read an extract.
  

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  The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories by Rudyard Kipling

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A collection of 17 short stories written by Kipling while working as a journalist in India. Includes the intriguing story, The Man Who Would Be King, which describes the exploits of two Englishmen who set themselves up as Kings in a remote area of Afghanistan.

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  Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A magnificent novel that we recommend to our customers on a daily, nay hourly, basis. In this poignant story of thwarted young love set in Azerbaijan on the eve of WWI, Said deftly weaves a classic tale of religious division and the fight for independence. Don't miss 'The Orientalist' either, a cracking biography of the author.

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  Petersburg by Andrei Bely

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  A long overdue republication of Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg, a representation of the pre-revolution chaos in St Petersburg through the story of Nikolai Apollonovich, a young revolutionary who has been ordered to assassinate his own father. A classic and overwhelmingly influential piece of Russian literature described by Vladimir Nabokov as "one of the four most important works of twentieth century literature."

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  In The Sea There Are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

  Price: £6.99    Add to Basket

  Ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbari’s world is turned upside down when his father is murdered by bandits and he and his mother are forced to flee Afghanistan in search of a safe haven. When his mother warns him ‘in a strange, low voice as warming as embers’ that he must never steal or cheat, Enaiatollah doesn’t realise that soon she too will leave his side. Based on the true story of one child’s remarkable journey through Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy in search of asylum.

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  And The Mountains Echoed by Khalid Hosseini

  Price: £18.99    Add to Basket

  Khaled Hosseini's third novel stands as a more than worthy successor to his seminal debut The Kite Runner and it's follow up A Thousand Splendid Suns. Moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, and to the Greek Island of Tinos, Hosseini eloquently writes about the family bonds that define us and shape our lives. Broader in scope and setting than anything the master storyteller has ever written before, the interwoven stories of several families from a southern Afghan town, And The Mountains Echoed is absorbing and instructive. No one can bring this world to life better than Hosseini.

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  Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Justifiably revered, Akhmatova was a poet of genius. This collection includes works from throughout her life, both personal and political. A brief and beautiful book.

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  The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A rollicking, tongue-in-cheek crime novel set in 1870s Russia akin to the Flashman series.

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  Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance by Sholem Aleichem

  Price: £6.99    Add to Basket

  A worthy addition to Melville House's excellent The Art of the Novella series, this is an hilarious tale of a young girl's infatuation with a wildly popular fiddler who passes through her shtetl. Tender, funny and historically vivid.

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  The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Nadeem Aslam's powerful story of Lara, a woman trying to uncover the story of her brother's disappearance in Afghanistan twenty-five years earlier, a grieving British Muslim and an American jewel dealer. A violent, turbulent book about modern Afghanistan, written with the slow-paced, sensory exuberance of a poet.

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  Red Cavalry & Other Stories by Isaac Babel

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  Quite simply some of the finest war fiction ever written, Babel's Red Cavalry stories draw on his experiences as a journalist riding with the Cossacks in the 1920s. They retain to this day an astonishing freshness, and a depth of compassion and observation that only the very best can achieve. Recommended without hesitation.

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  God Lives in St. Petersburg by Tom Bissell

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A cracking collection of stories set in Central Asia. Bissell is also the author of the excellent 'Chasing The Sea' and his deep understanding of the region's landscape and people is equally clear here.

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  The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  The best translation of Bulgakov's 1960s classic. Surreal, superb and utterly unique.

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  The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  This beautiful and masterly existential novel, acclaimed ever since its publication on 1938, tells of Giovanni Drogo, an Italian soldier posted to an old fortress overlooking the desolate wastelands of the Steppe.

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  A Russian Affair by Anton Chekhov

  Price: £4.99    Add to Basket

  Part of Penguin's Great Loves Series, this slim volume contains Anton Checkhov's short story also known as The Lady with the Dog. A wonderful, intoxicating story from this Russian master.

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  The Riddle of The Sands by Erskine Childers

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Childers' 1903 classic of European spy fiction still reads brilliantly. Hugely influential on writers, politicians and military strategists alike, it tells of an nautical journey on the Baltic coast that unearths a German plot to invade the British Isles. Essential.

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  Master of Petersburg by J. M. Coetzee

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A fictional depiction of the life of Dostoevsky after the mysterious death of his stepson. Set in pre-revolutionary Russia, this is typically absorbing yet grim writing from Coetzee.

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  Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A fine translation of one of the world's great novels. Nothing can match this compelling evocation of St Petersburg.

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  The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Set during Stalin's USSR, the characters, introduced in The Siege, live in constant fear of the secret police, unscrupulous neighbours and dark rumours.

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  The Siege by Helen Dunmore

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Set in Leningrad in 1941, this is a terrifically imagined novel of war. Dunmore focuses on two pairs of lovers caught up in the siege and draws a deeply moving tale from their plight.