With its union of practicality and magic, a kitchen becomes a portal to other times, lives, and distant lands. In "Cold Kitchen", Caroline Eden draws on Central Asia, Turkey, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, Russia, the Baltics, and Poland, exploring how cooking, travel, friends, and vivid memory intertwine to shape her life, writing, and imaginatio...

Growing up in communist Albania, one of the most isolated countries on earth, Lea Ypi remembers a childhood where the state promised freedom while life meant fear and secrets. As communism collapses, she confronts family loyalties, lost ideals and what true freedom costs. “Free” is a searching memoir of history’s human edge as a nation...

He fled revolution – only to find himself exiled in a strange new world. In “Goodbye Russia”, Rachmaninoff rebuilds his life in America: a virtuoso among Hollywood stars, yet haunted by the homeland he left behind. His final masterpiece, “Symphonic Dances,” becomes both farewell and requiem – an elegy for a lost Russia and a man between worlds. ...

A brilliant teacher turned prisoner, Eugenia Ginzburg is torn from her old Soviet life in 1937 after a colleague’s arrest. Dragged into interrogation, expelled from the Party, and sent to Siberian labour camps and exile, she endures unimaginable horror. “Into the Whirlwind” is her searing, unforgettable memoir of survival, courage, and humanity....

In her debut graphic memoir, "May The Universe Be Your Home!", Lena Wolf explores how to find a place to belong in a country that erased your history and identity. Lena Wolf grew up as an ethnic German child in the Soviet Union, in Kazakhstan. For the longest time, she believed that all Germans came from Kazakhstan–until her grandmother, Emilia,...

“Memories” follows Teffi on her frantic flight from revolutionary Moscow toward the Black Sea – her country unraveling beneath her feet. It’s a memoir of exile and loss tracing a world collapsing and the courage that carried her on. With wit, lyricism and fierce compassion, she records the ordinary souls caught in the catastrophe of revolution. ...

A young Englishwoman arrives in 1990s St Petersburg, expecting language drills and fairytales, but instead she plunges into smoky dive bars, clandestine punk gigs, and a heady romance with a Ukrainian rocker promising, “survive this Russian winter and I’ll give you one Ukrainian summer.” A witty and moving coming-of-age memoir at the end of an e...

As young journalists in Moscow at the dawn of Putin’s rule, Borogan and Soldatov belonged to a hopeful, idealistic generation. But their circle fractured as power tightened, loyalty shifted and authoritarianism seeped in. This is a deeply personal memoir of lost friendship, political betrayal and Russia’s turn away from its democratic promise.Ou...

“Parallel Lives” uncovers the Cold-War love story between Larissa Salmina, a fiercely intelligent curator from Leningrad, and Francis Haskell, the British art historian who felt like an outsider everywhere but with her. Drawn from Haskell’s diaries and Salmina’s vivid recollections, the book opens a window onto a vanished cultural world of Eur...

Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2025. “Patriot” is the life story of Alexei Navalny told in his own words, from his Soviet childhood, political awakening, marriage, and beloved family, to his poisoning and imprisonment, ending with his prison diaries. Clear‑eyed and determined, it is his final testament to courage and freedom. “A br...

In “Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me”, Lana Estemirova recalls her mother – human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, abducted and murdered for exposing abuses in Chechnya. Lana’s powerful memoir of love and loss chronicles her childhood amid conflict, mother and daughter’s bond and courage, and the relentless pursuit of ...

What do you do when your country becomes a repressive, authoritarian state? In “Political Girl”, says Maria Alyokhina, you fight. Through vivid, diary-like entries spanning prison, protests, solidarity with Ukraine, and an escape in disguise – this is a fierce, furious and darkly witty chronicle of resistance, art and survival under brutal rul...

In “Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev”, Gorky offers vivid memories of three literary giants. Through candid anecdotes and observations, he captures their personalities, struggles and the literary world they shaped. First published in 1920 by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press, it was considered a masterpiece of modern bio...

“Strong Roots: A Ukrainian Family Story of War, Exile and Hope” by Olia Hercules traces one family's survival through Soviet repression, famine, and recent war. Mixing intimate memoir with recipes and memory, Hercules shows how food, kinship and endurance sustain identity and nourish hope across generations and distance, and captures her love of...

Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic or a suffering melancholic, the man we think we know is only a shadow of reality. Simon Morrison’s iconoclastic biography recreates his complex world, music, life, ambitions and navigation of Imperial Russia, offering a vivid new appreciation of the famed composer....

When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Jana Bakunina felt furious, ashamed, and utterly helpless. A year later she returned to Yekaterinburg, witnessing a city seemingly untouched by war. In “The Good Russian”, she explores ordinary Russians’ complicity, her father’s support for the brutal regime, and the struggle to imagine a truly liberated futur...