‘The elders spoke of how they used to greet the land when they came here, the mountains, the dwelling places, and the paths, but I dare not. Just where do I belong? What is my ho
That an anthology centring on an iconic city should have a strong sense of place is axiomatic. When that city has moved rapidly from communism to capitalism – even via a ‘velve
A young nanny entering her employers’ lavish home in the Basque Country has a sudden premonition that something is amiss. The scene that awaits in the master bedroom is horrific:
THE RETURN OF MARIA LAZAR, THE WRITER NAZISM WROTE OUT OF HISTORY ‘One wonders why and how this work could have escaped notice for a whole century’, mused the Frankfurter Allge
As people worldwide seek to gain a better understanding of Ukraine and its turbulent history, numerous lists of must-reads have emerged. This one has no pretensions to being either
How does a principled young police detective go about conducting a murder inquiry in early 1930s Leningrad, when his CID boss is a recruit from the notorious OGPU secret police (pr
My grandfather was old. He had a bushy white beard and smelled of tobacco. He walked with a stick, was always dressed in black, and dropped bits of food when he ate. But he could f
How does a young man in wartime Antwerp avoid being shipped off to work in Nazi Germany? Wilfried Wils finds a convenient solution: join the local police – even if that means han
‘This is the song I sing as a former convict’, writes Aziz BineBine, introducing his astonishingly life-affirming account of incarceration in ‘six square metres of hell’. F
The five ‘stans’ portrayed by Erika Fatland – Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan – are, it’s probably fair to say, scarcely more familiar to
