Russian Life Books

We got our start in 1990 publishing books on doing business in and traveling to Russia. Since then, we have expanded into maps, periodicals, ebooks, ejournals and online publishing. But books are still a core part of what we do. Of particular interest is the line of fiction and non-fiction titles we have been augmenting in recent years.

February 1, 2012
Vladimir's Mustache
Vladimir's Mustache

Set against the backdrop of Russian history from the time of Peter the Great to the years of the post-Soviet collapse, the nine stories in Vladimir's Mustache represent a rare feat of ventriloquism and range. All of Stephan Eirik Clark’s stories are told with a humor that’s never far removed from an underlying sadness, telling with great emotional honesty the story of men and women who are trapped by circumstances, alienated by history, or irrevocably estranged from the culture at large.

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Tags: russia, soviet, literature, stories, women, stalin
December 1, 2011
Faith & Humor
Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.

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Tags: fiction, Orthodoxy
November 15, 2011
Review our Books
Review our Books

We value your feedback! If you have purchased and used/read one of our books, please consider reviewing in our store, on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, or other book lover sites.

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November 3, 2011
eBooks
Digital Publications

We have been publishing books, magazines, journals and maps with ink and pulp for 20 years, but for those who like their books in bits we also offer a number of our titles for Kindle, Nook, iPad and other digital platforms. Below is a list of all our publications which have digital incarnations.

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October 9, 2011
Jews in Service
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.

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Tags: jews, russian history
October 1, 2011
Best of Russian Life
The Best of Russian Life

We culled through 15 years of Russian Life to select readers’ and editors’ favorite stories and biographies for inclusion in a special two-volume collection. Totalling over 1100 pages, these two volumes encompass some of the best writing we have published over the last two decades, and include the most timeless stories and biographies – those that can be read again and again.

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May 1, 2011
Marooned in Moscow
Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

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November 1, 2010
Frogs Who Begged...
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.

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October 15, 2010
Chekhov Bilingual
Chekhov Bilingual

In honor of Chekhov's 150th birthday, we produced a special 168-page Chtenia: Chekhov Bilingual with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. This is truly a collector's edition, in addition to being a great language-learning tool.

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February 1, 2010
Little Golden Calf
The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.

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