RUSSIAN BOOKS REPRESENTED BY THE RUSSIAN AGENTS WHO HAVE WRITTEN FOR OUR BLOG

Daniel Stein, Interpreter, by Ludmila Ulitskaya, translated by Arch Tait, published by Overlook in the US and Duckworth in the UK, represented by Elkost

Daniel Stein, Interpreter is already seen by many as the great Russian novel of our time. Winner of the Russian National Literary Prize, Ludmila Ulitskaya has earned accolades abroad for this groundbreaking work, at last available in English from Overlook. The novel tells the story of Daniel Stein, a Polish Jew who miraculously survives the Holocaust by working for the Gestapo as an interpreter. After the war, he converts to Catholicism, becomes a priest, enters the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, and emigrates to Israel. Despite this seemingly impossible progression, the life and destiny of Daniel Stein are not an invention -- the character is based on the life of Oswald Rufeisen, the real Brother Daniel. This innovative, furious and funny book, compiled as a series of documents -- letters, diary entries, postcards, and other records -- ranges from before the war to modern times and from the shtetl to Haifa to Boston. It tells of a life full of contradictions and undaunted faith.

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is one of the Goumen&Smirnova Literary Agency success stories, published by Penguin UK

An entrancing collection of tales, as humane and unsentimental as Chekhov, as grim and funny as Beckett, as dark and unsettling as Poe. Independent on Sunday

Penguin has given this book instant promotion to 'modern classic' status and it's easy to see why. It is an extraordinary collection of jet-black tales by one of Russian's foremost writers, which has understandably inspired comparisons with Tolstoy. Beat that. Daily Mail