A new book of poems by Sergei Shabalin, the New York poet, journalist, and essayist. His texts present a remarkable combination of surface simplicity and clarity (at the level of syntax and vocabulary, veering now toward the colloquial, now toward the archetypal) with a stratification of meanings, a doubling of perspectives, a rapid shift of optics before the reader has quite had time to grow accustomed. This produces an effect of estrangement: a vision of the world as an integral whole, inaccessible to the eye in its essence, blurred in the impressionist manner in its details, yet striking in its broader sweep.
“Shabalin is bold with words, sometimes ironic, but he doesn’t shy away from speaking his mind…”
—Alexander Eremenko, poet (1950–2021)
“These texts feature a remarkable combination of simplicity and clarity of expression on the surface (at the level of syntax and vocabulary—sometimes leaning toward the everyday, sometimes toward the archetypal)—coupled with layered meanings, dual perspectives, and instant shifts in viewpoint that the reader barely has time to get used to…”
–Gennady Katsov, poet, essayist
“Shabalin is an attentive chronicler of everyday life with a gift for subtle irony. His ‘private individual’ emerged from the poetics of the 1970s… He is devoid of grand illusions, holds a low opinion of himself and of humanity in general, yet at the same time diligently and touchingly creates small illusions…”
–Vladimir Kozlov, poet, literary critic
“Sergei Shabalin’s poems are not pure poetry steeped in autumn, languor, or death. They are stories, situations, and passions—set against the backdrop of the country’s current state… They are compelling both for their pain and for their narrative.”
–Alexander A. Pushkin, poet
Boris Khersonsky and Ludmila Khersonsky write poetry that speaks to the crisis of our time, when refugees run from bombardments, and nonstop propaganda flows from TV. The setting is Ukraine at the start of the twenty-first century, but it is eerily recognizable anywhere.
Sailor, artist, lawyer, and writer, Dmitri Bystrolyotov was one of a team of Soviet spies operating in the West between the World Wars. He seduced women to learn great secrets of foreign states, but was then arrested and tortured in the Gulag, where he began to document the crimes against humanity of the regime he had served.
This book features biographies of the author’s family members, detailing with the effect of the war on their lives.
The first bilingual collection of Ukrainian verse by Borys Khersonsky. In these poems, heaven is often the setting: Jews who perished during pogroms and in the Holocaust continue with their daily routines, whereas on earth, displacement has become a constant, and collective memory has been cleansed of the Jewish past.
A collection of very short stories. In Russian.
