If you suffer from insomnia, or just don't know what to do in the evening before going to bed, then start reading! But be careful, because some books are so interesting that you won't notice how the morning comes!

Photo: goodfon.ru

So, a list of fascinating books that will interest both "avid readers" and novice "book lovers":

"Come in large numbers", Narine Abgaryan

This is a tragicomedy about a young and ambitious girl who, at the beginning of the difficult 90s, decided to leave her native small mountainous republic and conquer the capital. And she immediately realized that every visitor, whom the author calls "come in large numbers", has his own Moscow. Someone sees it in the millions of people scurrying through the streets, and someone gets the opportunity to get close to such people. And some of them protect, protect, care for, help, support and just love. The author of the book talks about his small piece of that very “come in large numbers” life of a visitor, about which many indigenous people big cities do not guess. And there is a place for feats in it, the most important of which is to decide to emigrate and accept a new place as it is, and sincerely love it. And then Moscow will certainly reciprocate.

The Collector, John Fowles

This is the debut story of the author, and for many it practically freezes the blood, because this is a real psychological thriller that excites the mind. The plot is the fate of two people connected with each other. He is a butterfly collector. There is a void in his soul, which he seeks to fill with beauty. And one day Ferdinand finds himself a wonderful victim - the girl Miranda. It is as if she was created in order to create and enjoy freedom. And he understands that he will give everything to possess her. And so, Miranda becomes a prisoner of Ferdinand. But will he be able to keep real Life, Beauty, Freedom and all the most beautiful that can be in the human soul within the walls of the castle?

The story is built on the subtle relationship of the victim and the villain and allows you to rethink many of the stories of world classics that seemed to have long been worn out.

"Forrest Gump", Winston Groom

This is the story of a mentally retarded guy, which he himself outlined on the pages of the legendary book that formed the basis of the film of the same name. The plot can be called practically the embodiment of the myth of the very "American dream" that disturbed the minds of millions of young people who lived in the second half of the last century. But at the same time, this is a sharp and even slightly cruel satirical parody of the society of that time, which was not ready to accept people who were somehow different from the main mass. Forrest Gump was different, and therefore became the object of ridicule. But this boy is not crazy at all. He is different, and he can see and feel what others cannot see and feel. He is special.

"Amsterdam", Ian McEwan

The author of the book is one of the representatives of the "elite" of modern British prose. And for a work that has become a real world bestseller, he received the Booker Prize. Victor Golyshev, who translated this creation into Russian, also got around to the award. It would seem that the story is simple and very relevant. But how many nuances are in it, how many thoughts, how many doubts! The main characters are two friends. One of them is a successful editor of a popular newspaper. The second is a brilliant contemporary composer who is writing the Millennium Symphony. And they enter into an agreement on euthanasia, under the terms of which, if one falls into a state of unconsciousness and ceases to understand what he is doing, then the other will take his life.

Amendment 22 by Joseph Heller

Although more than half a century has passed since the publication of the first book, this work is still legendary and one of the most popular, and many publications have included it in the list of the best novels.

It's not quite ordinary story about US Air Force pilots who took part in World War II. All of them get into absurd situations, face awkward people and thoughtless actions, they themselves commit incomprehensible acts. And all this is connected with a certain amendment No. 22, which actually does not exist on paper, but says that every military man who does not want to perform a combat mission is quite normal and therefore fit for service. But in fact, in this story one can see not so much an anti-war novel as a deep and global mockery of modern everyday life, of society and the laws in force.

"Collusion of Dunces", John Kennedy Toole

The author of this book, who, by the way, lived to see the Pulitzer Prize for this creation, was able to create a literary hero, unlike any described in satirical literature. Ignatius J. Riley is creative, imaginative and eccentric. He fancies himself an intellectual, but in reality he is a glutton, a spendthrift and a quitter. He is similar to the modern Don Quixote or Gargantua, who despises society for its lack of geometry and theology. He is reminiscent of Thomas Aquinas, who launched his own hopeless war against everything and everyone: gay people, the excesses of the century, and even intercity buses. And this image is so interesting, unusual and, unfortunately, relevant that everyone can see a part of themselves in it.

"Monday Starts on Saturday" Strugatsky Brothers

This book is a real masterpiece of Russian science fiction, a kind of embodiment of the utopia of the Soviet era, a kind of artistic fulfillment of the dream of possibilities. modern man learn, create, learn and solve the mysteries of the universe.

The main characters of the book are employees of NIICHAVO (Research Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry). They are masters and magicians, real pioneers. And they will face many amazing events and phenomena: a time machine, a hut on chicken legs, a genie and even an artificially grown man!

"The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins

This book has become a real bestseller. This is a mysterious and fascinating story of the girl Rachel, who, from the train window, watches, as it seems to her, the ideal spouses. She even gave them names: Jason and Jess. Every day she sees the cottage of a man and a woman and understands that they probably have everything: well-being, happiness, wealth and love. And Rachel had all this, but not so long ago she lost all this. But one day, approaching the already well-known cottage, the girl realizes that something is going wrong. She sees frightening, mysterious and disturbing events that disturb her consciousness. And after that, the ideal wife Jess disappears. And Rachel understands that it is she who must solve this mystery and find a woman. But will the police take her seriously? And, in general, is it worth interfering in someone else's life? This is for the reader to find out.

The Book of Life: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

In the last months of his life, the old professor managed to make several important discoveries.

He realized that death is not the end at all. This is the beginning. And, therefore, dying is the same as preparing for something unknown and new. And it's not scary at all, but even interesting.

Before leaving for another world, the old man passed on such knowledge to everyone who was with him in the last minutes of his earthly life. What's next? Will we know it?

The Process, Franz Kafka

The author is one of the most beloved, mysterious, readable and popular writers of the last century. He managed to create a unique artistic universe in which everything is completely different from real life. She is sad, dreary and almost absurd, but incredibly and bewitchingly beautiful. Her characters constantly become participants in strange adventures, they are looking for the meaning of life and trying to get answers to questions that have been tormenting them for a long time. The novel "The Trial" is the work that will most clearly understand the mysterious nature of Franz Kafka's work.

"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

This book can be called strange, scary and incredibly attractive.

According to the plot, boys brought up in the best traditions find themselves on desert island. The author told the readers a philosophical parable about how fragile the world is and what can happen to people who have forgotten about kindness, love and mercy. This is a dystopia with some symbolic overtones, which explores the behavior of children who find themselves on a desert island during wartime. Will they be able to maintain humanity or will they obey natural instincts?

Rita Hayworth, or the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

The plot of this book is the story of a man whose nightmare suddenly became a reality. He, innocent of anything, was thrown into prison, into a real hell, in which he will spend the rest of his life. And no one has been able to get out of this terrible place yet. But the main character does not intend to give up and put up with what was destined for him by fate. He took a desperate step. But can he not only escape, but also get used to freedom and the new world, survive in it? By the way, this work of the real fantasy king Stephen King served as the basis for the film of the same name, which starred Morgan Freeman and Tim Robinson.

The events unfold in England in 1960. Jennifer Sterling wakes up after a terrible car accident and realizes that she cannot remember who she is, what happened to her. She does not remember her husband either. She would have continued to live in ignorance if, by chance, she had not found letters addressed to her and signed with the letter "B". Their author confessed his love to Jennifer and persuaded her to leave her husband. Further, the author takes readers to the XXI century. Young reporter Ellie finds one of the letters written by the mysterious "B" in a newspaper archive. She hopes that by taking up the investigation, she will be able to unravel the mystery of the author and recipient of the messages, restore her reputation and even sort out her own personal life.

“Lady with glasses with a gun in a car”, Sebastien Japrisot

The main character of the book is a blonde. She is beautiful, sentimental, sincere, deceitful, restless, stubborn and stupid. This lady, who has never seen the sea, gets into a car and tries to escape from the police. At the same time, she constantly repeats to herself that she is not crazy.

But people around here disagree. The heroine behaves more than strangely and constantly gets into ridiculous situations. She believes that wherever she is, she can be harmed. But if she escapes, she can be alone with herself and free herself from what she hides, from what worries her so much.

Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

The author has been writing this book for ten whole years, but it has become a real masterpiece. It talks about the fact that art has the power and power, and sometimes it can radically change and literally turn our lives upside down, and quite suddenly.

The hero of the work, 13-year-old boy Theo Decker, miraculously survived after the explosion that killed his mother. His father abandoned him, and he is forced to wander through foster families and completely strange houses. He traveled to Las Vegas and New York and almost despaired. But his only consolation, which, by the way, almost led to his death, is the masterpiece of the Dutch old master, which he stole from the museum.

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

This book is like a complex mirror maze in which seemingly completely different and unrelated stories echo, intersect and overlap each other in an amazing way.

In total, there are six main characters in the work: a young composer who is forced to sell his soul and body; 19th century notary; a journalist working in California in the 1970s who uncovers a conspiracy of a large company; a clone servant working in a modern fast food business; a modern petty publisher and a simple goatherd living in the decline of civilization.

1984 George Orwell

This work can be attributed to the genre of dystopia, it describes a society in which a harsh totalitarian regime reigns.

There is nothing more terrible than the imprisonment of free and living minds in the fetters of social foundations.

"Blackberry Winter" Sarah Gio

Events unfold in 1933 in Seattle. Vera Ray kisses her little son before going to bed and goes to work at night in a hotel. In the morning, a single mother discovers that the whole city is covered with snow, and her son has disappeared. In a snowdrift near the house, Vera finds the boy's favorite toy, but there are no footprints nearby. A desperate mother is willing to do anything to find her child.

The author then takes readers to present-day Seattle. Reporter Claire Aldridge writes an article about a snowstorm that literally paralyzed the city. By chance, she learns that similar events have already occurred 80 years ago. Starting to explore the mysterious history of Vera Ray, Claire realizes that she is somehow mysteriously intertwined with her own life.

"Blindness" José Saramago

The inhabitants of a nameless country and a nameless city are facing a strange epidemic. All of them rapidly begin to go blind. And the authorities, in order to stop this incomprehensible disease, decide to introduce strict quarantine and relocate all the sick to the old hospital, taking them into custody.

The main characters of the work are an infected ophthalmologist and his wife pretending to be blind. They are trying to collect the world bit by bit and find order in this gradually embracing chaos.

“Three apples fell from the sky”, Narine Abgaryan

This book is the story of a small village, which is somewhere high in the mountains.

Its inhabitants are all a little grumpy, a little eccentric, but at the same time, real treasures of the spirit are hidden in each of them.

This is a witty, sublime and unusual dystopia about modern society consumption, which is programmed at the genetic level. And in this world, the sad story of the Savage is unfolding, whom the author regards as the Hamlet of our time. It still retains the remnants of humanity, but people divided into social consumption castes do not want to recognize it or simply cannot do it.

If we list noteworthy books by contemporary authors, then we cannot fail to mention the work “Social network “Kovcheg” by Evgeniy Vetsel which consists of three parts.

The main character falls from the roof, but is reborn again. Having lived a little in the XI century, he finds himself in the distant future - in the XXXVI century in Moscow. The author touches on many interesting devices, techniques of psychology and sales, modern reflections on life and reasons to seriously think about rhetorical questions. The second book describes life in America and the theory of one of the options for a worldwide conspiracy. And the third part tells about the adventures of the hero on another planet, where white angels live.

These were the most interesting books worth reading even for those who think they don't like to read. They will turn your views and even ideas about the world.

P.S. What books do you remember the most?

What should be a book for summer reading - exciting, witty, light? AiF.ru introduces book novelties that are nice not only to take with you on vacation, but also to tell your friends about them.

Modern Russian prose

Vacation is a good time to catch up and read the unread. If you agree with this statement, then pay attention to the current books of contemporary Russian authors.

"Aviator" Evgeny Vodolazkin

Quote from the book: “In the life of a person, nothing is impossible - the impossibility comes only with death. And that's not necessary either."

Award winning novel The big Book" and " Yasnaya Polyana» Evgeny Vodolazkin "Aviator" today ranks first in the ranking of the most popular books of the genre " fiction". And if you are not yet familiar with the current book of this season or the author, who is already called "Russian Umberto Eco", It's time to start reading the Aviator.

The hero of Vodolazkin's new novel is a man who woke up one day in a hospital bed and realized that he didn't remember anything. Now he has to bit by bit restore his own life. The strangest thing is that the year 1999 is on the calendar, and his memories are limited to St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 20th century.

"Faith" Alexander Snegirev

Quote from the book: "Having made a choice, you recognize the path, and any path leads in one direction."

This winter, Alexander Snegirev received the most prestigious Russian literary award, the Russian Booker, for his book Vera. His novel is a story about a simple woman named Vera and her unsuccessful search for a real man in modern Russia.

Despite the fact that the choice of the winner of the Russian Booker was unexpected for many, Snegirev's novel itself was definitely one of the most notable books of 2015. And those who have not yet had time to get acquainted with Vera, which reflects Russian reality, should hurry up and form their own opinion about it.

detectives

If you like to solve riddles, the detective genre is what you need. But keep in mind, psychologists say that detectives, like scientific books, are taken by those who, even on vacation, find it difficult to relax and need to maintain their usual level of tension.

"In the Service of Evil" Robert Galbraith

Quote from the book: “If you stop and look closely, beauty can be found almost everywhere, but when each new day is given with a fight, you somehow forget about this free luxury.”

Under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, none other than the author of the cult saga of Harry Potter is hiding. Joanne Rowling. In the Service of Evil is her third book and the final installment in her Cormoran Strike series. The “mother of Harry Potter” herself admits that “In the Service of Evil” is the only work that causes her the most terrible nightmares (in the process of working on the manuscript, Rowling had to re-read a bunch of police reports and stories about serial killers).

The adventures in the Service of Evil begin with the fact that Strike's assistant Robin receives a package with a severed female leg. Now detectives have to unravel the name of a terrible criminal.

Lontano Jean-Christophe Granget

Quote from the book: “It is only in the movies that the wife of a billionaire sleeps with a policeman - heroic and underpaid. In real life, she prefers to stay by her pool."

The book of the French journalist and writer Jean-Christophe Grange "Lontano" is one of the most popular on the Russian market today. And the secret is not even in the name of a famous writer and journalist or in his regalia, but in the fact that the author, as usual, came up with a top-notch thriller with a complex and exciting intrigue.

This time in the center of the detective story is the family of the chief of the French police, which is subjected to daring attacks. What criminal is operating in France and why the blows fall on the family of the number one policeman is not so easy to guess, because Grange is famous for keeping readers in suspense until the very last page.

Memoirs and biographies

It has long been proven that reading memoirs and biographies satisfies not only people's interest in peeping through the keyhole, but also secret narcissism (we all unwittingly look for ideal images of ourselves or our loved ones in great people).

"Jackie Chan. I'm happy" Jackie Chan, Mo Zhu

Quote from the book: "I a common person who has the courage to do something extraordinary.”

This sincere book will be of interest not only to fans of Chan's talent, but also to everyone who likes works about courageous people who are not afraid to make and correct their own mistakes.

"Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 best story» Canfield Jack, Hansen Mark Victor, Newmark Amy

Quote from the book: “If you need to chop down a tree with an ax, and you strike five hard blows at it every day, in time even the largest tree will fall to the ground.”

The sale of the most anticipated summer series "Chicken Broth" starts in Russian bookstores. It is interesting that in 1993 this collection of small real stories no one wanted to publish in life, and by 2016, the book, which was rejected by 144 publishing houses, became one of the most successful projects in the history of book publishing.

The collection "Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Best Stories" is not called by chance - it contains a hundred poignant stories that can heal mental wounds and uplift the spirit. The authors introduce readers to the most unexpected characters, among them a failed actress who finds true happiness after learning that she has cancer; the most beautiful girl of the city who falls in love with a hunchback after just two sentences, and a 13-year-old girl who sold 45,526 boxes of cookies to fulfill her mother's dream.

Love novels

The fashion for novels in the Fifty Shades of Gray format has finally passed, it's time to look for new books and discover the names of authors you don't know yet.

"After You" by Jojo Moyes

Quote from the book: “I doubt that happiness is exactly the thing that can be earned.”

At the end of 2015, a sequel to the world bestseller “Me Before You” was released in Russia, which still remains the leader in sales in the country's bookstores. Jojo Moyes' new book "After You" tells what happened to main character saga Lou Clark after the death of her lover.

As Moyes herself admitted, she was not going to write a sequel, but the work on the script for the film adaptation and the endless number of letters asking how Lou's later life turned out did not let her forget the heroes of the popular novel.

"Sorry..." Janusz Wisniewski

Quote from the book: "Some things remain in memory and cause appropriate associations only when they are correctly named."

One of the most popular writers of modern Poland and the author of one of the most reprinted romance novels, Loneliness on the Web, has written a new poignant story. "I'm sorry ..." Janusz Wisniewski is told from the perspective of a man who suddenly discovered his wife's betrayal. A man cannot forgive betrayal and becomes obsessed with a thirst for revenge.

It seems that this fantastic story is just a fiction of the author, but in fact the book is based on real events that took place in the early 1990s in Krakow: the popular jazz singer Andrzej Zaucha and his companion Zuzanna Leśniak were shot dead by a jealous husband. Vishnevsky not only retells this tragic story, he carefully examines the feelings of the characters.

A story from the USA that stirred up the entire Internet there and almost led to a war between the sexes. We pass it on in the first person:

My wife recently announced that she will no longer give me a blowjob and there will be no oral sex from her at all. The explanation is simple: she never really liked it at all, and in her opinion I can do without. In general, she is right, since I cannot force her to take it in her mouth, since she has every right to dispose of her mouth. But!

We have a tradition that every Friday we have dinner with our father-in-law, her parents. These are people of the old school, very difficult to communicate, but the tradition itself is already over 10 years old, just as long as our marriage lasts. It turns out that every Friday after work, instead of relaxing, I have to spend time with people I can't stand. Why am I doing this? To make your wife happy!

So I told my wife that let her think what she wants, but I will no longer do what I can not stand - spend Fridays with her parents.

In response, she stated that I was an ass and it was completely different situations. I do not agree - we both stopped doing what we do not like to do, although doing it made each other happy. And we both have the right to be asses to each other.

So am I an ass?

I told my dad that a guy would come to me. I went out to the store, when I returned and went to my room, there was no front door in it! Dad took it down! Like, I wanted to change for a long time ... The guy and I sat on the chairs for 6 hours, playing cards.

But don't tell me, holy water still has very special properties.
We had a completely drunk bricklayer in our Ufa branch. The bricklayer is wonderful. The number of masonry cubes given out by him in a shift with four helpers did not even fit into my depraved imagination. The helpers, who were also sitting on the deal, prayed for him - the salary is more than two times higher than that of the same workers.
But that's all when the bricklayer is sober. And when you're drunk, you're not a bricklayer at all. Moreover, he has a binge "for a month in a month."

One of the helpers, a man who is both deeply religious and kind, heard that in one male branch of the convent (I’m not kidding, there was such a thing, now it’s not), located in a place called “Holy Bushes”, there is such a cool priest that water consecrated to them from alcoholism cures at times. You just need to drink a couple of liters of it and first sprinkle everything on top.

I also heard, under the indelible jokes of my colleagues, that any water will help from alcoholism if it is mixed in equal proportions with gramophone needles and turpentine and used as an enema, went to the monastery and brought back a two-liter beer bottle with the most holy water, which there was. And he decided, in secret from the one being healed, to take up his cure, gradually mixing water into his tea. Started with sprinkling. Why did he wait on the fifth floor of the house under construction, when the bricklayer comes out of the entrance to the change house to change clothes and sprinkled a little holy liquid on him.

The hands, which were worn out during the day, could not hold the container. Almost two liters right in the bottle rushed after the small splashes and hit, well, not in the center, but casually on the mason's protective helmet.
Helmet - helmet, but not without a concussion. The density of holy water is almost equal to the density of ordinary water, that is, it is close to unity. But when the bricklayer from the hospital came out of his house about a drink, he was cut off.

So whatever you want, but holy water has special anti-alcohol properties. A simple one in general could hit her in the head so much that she could kill.

(C) Naive

I apologize in advance for obscene language, I tried to soften it as soon as possible so that the meaning was not lost.

One day in May, Major Stepanov, the deputy commander of the rear unit, was sitting in the barracks office, smoking and talking about nothing with the political officer, Captain Zeletsky. The major's mood was very high - the next day the lion's share of officers and personnel was winding "into the fields" - to the field exit for the purpose of practice. The unit commander himself led this expedition, and Major Stepanov remained in charge, delegating the care of supplying the personnel on the road to Ensign Chernov. It remained to settle minor issues such as the issuance of duffel bags with contents and raincoats. The major decided to call Chernov at the warehouse and give the CC a call. The phone rang, but no one picked up the phone. Also, the ensign did not answer on the mobile. Stepanov leaned out of the office:
- Orderly, where is Sergeant Nyrkov, let him run here!
- Ensign Chernov took him to the warehouses in the morning, dragging the major, - answered the orderly.
Stepanov sighed - he would have to go to the household zone himself, since both the ensign and his right hand- sensible old-timer sergeant Nyrkov is there, but there is no way to contact. Probably wrapped up there with things. Fuck him, I'm going. And tomorrow the lafa will begin - there is almost no one in the unit, sit yourself, smoke, and straighten the papers slowly.

The walk to the warehouses took ten minutes. Major Stepanov saw that the padlock of warehouse number one lay next to the half-open door. The shackle of the castle was sawn.
- Well, your mother! - said Stepanov, - Ensign, you will buy me a new one from your salary, since you lost the keys, - and the major entered the warehouse.
At first he froze like an idol from Easter Island, then blinked, then rubbed his eyes with his hands. Nothing changed. THE WAREHOUSE WAS EMPTY. His only property was the chair on which ensign Chernov slept, and an empty bottle of vodka on the floor.
- Chernov, bitch! - yelled the major, furiously shaking the dormouse by the breasts, - Where ... Where the fuck ... EVERYTHING!?!
Ensign opened his eyes, got up with difficulty from his chair, breathed into his commander with fumes and said in a hoarse, fallen voice:
- Stole, comrade major!

Stepanov took some time to digest what was said. And then he was very happy - an extraordinary rank loomed before him, a captain, and maybe even a senior lieutenant. First of all, the robbed deputy on the rear decided to deal with the ensign. Oh, Major Stepanov was a great connoisseur of genealogy and was about to tell the unlucky warrant officer the whole story of his family and their relationship with large and not so, horned and hornless cattle. He could tell a similar story to anyone, even if he were woken up after a daily watch (and perhaps especially if this happened). However, the major had serious doubts about Chernov's sanity at the moment. For the same reason, he did not threaten to be fired from the Armed Forces. Stepanov made a Solomonic decision - he loaded the warrant officer into a tambourine. Having humbly accepted the punishment, Chernov fell down and fell asleep again. The major jumped out of the warehouse. It seems that our hero was descended from Hercules himself - his cry was so deafening and lengthy ...
- NIRKOOOOOOOOV!
Thirty seconds later, the aforementioned materialized in front of the major.
- Sergeant, what the fuck is going on here!??
- I don’t know, dragging the major, since the very morning I’ve been cooking the bottom of the Chernov Niva in boxing, and he himself was engaged in the warehouse.
Rolling his eyes furiously, Stepanov at first almost punished the sergeant using the method tested on the ill-fated Chernov, but realized that Nyrkov was not to blame - he was told to cook, and he cooked.
- Blow to the barracks, run. You will return with the political officer and the foreman.
- There is! - and the sergeant was blown away by the wind.
Stepanov made a cursory inspection of the warehouse area, and by the time reinforcements arrived, everything became more or less clear. The attackers found a disguised loophole in the fence through which personnel dangled in "self-propelled guns", at night, having cut down the lock, they entered the warehouse and took everything clean from there. Ensign Chernov, leaving his assistant to shamanize his swallow, came to the warehouse, saw the desolation that reigned there, realized what was happening, and did not come up with anything better than getting drunk. There were no traces of the kidnappers.

Fortunately for Stepanov, everything that was needed for the field trip was in another warehouse.
“Only one chance to catch the assholes,” the major decided, betting on banal human greed. At night, filled with righteous anger, Stepanov with service weapons and two fighters huddled not far from the second warehouse.
- Pan or gone, - thought the major. At about one in the morning, some personalities climbed through the hole in the fence. The major, who, despite his wild nervousness, began to nod, almost missed them. It remained to make sure that these were thieves, and not warriors on a spree trying to smuggle alcohol into the unit. When the soft sounds of a hacksaw were heard from the door of the second warehouse, Stepanov, like a phoenix of retribution, flew out of the ambush and yelled:
- Well, stand, bitches, I will shoot!
The detainees were guests from Central Asia, who at first tried to convince the avenger that they did not speak Russian, but the major, quick to reprisal, quickly convinced them that cooperation would allow the expropriators to retain the remnants of dignity and teeth. Then there was the transfer of what was stolen from the hostel nearby back to the warehouse, then again the pizdyuly, then the police, testimony, catching up from the commander (albeit softened due to the lack of losses).

The hole in the fence was tightly walled up, some drove off into the fields, and the long-suffering major began to suffer garbage, which he dreamed about.

P.S. The soldiers began to go to self-propelled guns in other ways, but that's a completely different story.

Inspired by yesterday's story about carps and holy water...
My father, like in principle many who went through the international school of the USSR, and then survived the invasion of religions, psychics, voodoo and other Kashpirovskys, was a superstitious person. At that time, someone whispered to him that at baptism in January you can get holy water without going anywhere, just pouring it into jars and leaving it overnight, while leaving the window open.
At that time, I had exams for an excitation group engineer on my nose (there are such specialties with funny names at power plants, for example, my friend was an engineer for his own needs). Exams for the position of an engineer in Minsredmash (Atomprom) are not the Unified State Examination and not even soviet exams with tickets. That is, there are no tickets and tests. There is literature - a dozen books on operation, safety precautions, measurement standards, etc., but there are no ready-made questions. A commission of 5-7 heads of departments sits with the chief engineer at the head and asks questions - any questions from books that the engineer must know by heart. Such a "fun" exam. And of course, I was never at all up to my father’s whims, my brain melted from the amount of information that I drove into memory with the same masochistic persistence.
I managed to go to bed at 12, I get up at 4 in the morning, I go to the kitchen for breakfast with this damn pile of books and ... I find myself in the realm of water. Water is everywhere, on the table, on the windowsill, on the floor, in basins, pots and, of course, in three-liter jars. Batin's life motto - to us Tatars, if only for nothing - in action. Holding back my overwhelming feelings about the environment, I clear the table, put my stack of books on it and start another primitive download of information into the brain while replenishing my vitality - that is, I have breakfast, leafing through the rules for electrical installations.
The reading was fascinating, but some suspicious rustle made me turn my head towards the window, just in time to consciously take a "holy" shower from a three-liter jar standing on the windowsill. Behind the overturned can peeked out the displeased muzzle of Grisha, a house cat who had returned from a night of orgies.
Since Grisha expressed an opinion similar to mine about this kitchen Venice, he didn’t get hit on the neck, and I grumbled under my breath and went to change clothes and get ready for work.
***
It was quiet in the reception room, the commission had been sitting for an hour, torturing the station engineer on duty (DIS), the shift supervisor of the electrical shop was sitting next to me - he was supposed to be next and this prospect did not please him, but alas, the door did open and DIS with a red face fell out of the office (well, like Efremov's - his face is so red), and it was the turn of the shift supervisor. After another 45 minutes, he, just as dejectedly as the donkey Eeyore, came out of this door and I went to torture ...
I stepped into the office and 7 pairs of eyes looked at me.
- Well, let's get started - said the chief engineer - Alexander Ivanovich, start.
The subsequent events reminded me of ping-pong. Question - answer, question - answer, question - answer. And I answered automatically, as if watching the exam from the side.
After a dozen questions and answers, the chief engineer asked the heads of departments present who had more questions.
No one had any questions, I was offered to go to the reception and wait for the decision of the commission. Two operatives languished in the waiting room, waiting for their fate, when they saw me they were surprised.
- Why are you so fast?
- You mean fast? Same as you.
- Only 15 minutes have passed ... Have you failed?
- Looks like no...
After 5 minutes of tedious waiting, the secretary announced the verdict of the commission - DIS and the shift supervisor were sentenced to another retake in a week, and I ... from that day on was considered an engineer of an electrical laboratory. Such is the baptismal story!

About how love for papers in childhood led me to my work) Late 80s. We lived with my parents in a private house in the city. Who just did not play probably in childhood in school. Mom bought notebooks for 2 kopecks for the whole academic year, which I diligently signed and laid out on the floor in the order that the students sit in the classroom. These were piles of mathematics and the Russian language, and this is already 60 notebooks). From the attic or the shed, I dragged in batches the textbooks that interested me, according to which my mother studied or entered the university. I read something, dictated, wrote in notebooks "for the students" and put marks, taking the notebooks for verification. In the cold season, a polished dark cabinet served as my board at home, then my mother nevertheless found scratches from chalk on it and it flew into me. And in the relatively warm season, I used an iron garage painted green. Neighborhood little girls also came ... taught everyone ... wrote, counted ... they especially liked to "draw" incomprehensible formulas and pretend that we count and know everything. Then my mother scolded me for notebooks and began to buy only in quantity for one half of the year. Then I cut the notebooks in half) As a result, she began to buy them for me as needed. But I found a way. I cut toilet paper into ribbons of 30 centimeters, folded them and sewed them in the middle with a thread. When folded, it turned out to be a notebook. It was not convenient to write, the paper was torn, but I played ... Desperate situations it doesn’t happen to me even now))) And when it was already almost impossible to enter the room from the papers, my mother brought the trash can and threw everything away without looking. I remember in such "my paper shortage years" she threw away utility bills, probably from the 70s. And she said not to take them out of the trash can! But I still took it out, hid it, and played them only when she was not at home. But this case taught me one thing: never throw away anything that would seem useless, but related to documents) After half a year or a year, my mother asked if I had taken out those receipts, because there were some problems and it was necessary to look into them what -then. I will not forget her happy eyes when I showed where I hide them. After my dream came true. I worked at a technical school. She taught big kids to be catering technologists. It was a fun time. Students are 8 years younger than me)) I am a small fragile girl with a long braid, clutching a cool magazine in her hands, every day I launched them into the classroom. There was also a senior year. At first, of course, they did not take me seriously, they did not teach me, they talked. I put two of them in a row. They called me to the dean's office, scolded that school system ratings. If everyone has deuces, then I myself do not know the subject. The trouble is in general ... you can’t bring discipline with deuces) I’m sitting and thinking what to do ... And the other day I’m walking in a new long coat, in new high-heeled boots, nose up and going up the stairs I step on the bottom of the coat and fall in front of students. At least get up and run and write for dismissal) In general, in the lessons again, who cuts their nails, who paints their lips, who chats. I say calmly like this: my good ones, here you are sitting minding your own business and I think maybe I can also bring a washing machine here to wash (and show how I figuratively drag it into the office from the corridor), bring a bunch of laundry (I pretend that I I stuff it into this imaginary washing machine) Or maybe I can get nail polish and make up my nails, what can I just sit there sawing (defiantly shakes out my bag) Why am I wasting, I say, my time in vain, although I can do it too personal affairs. I sat down and sat and put things in order in the bag. The guys opened their mouths ... Soon this couple began, before which I had to show apparently this spontaneous performance about how their behavior looks from the outside. Later, I thought for a long time whether I did the right thing, but the result was. So I did the right thing) The couples began to pass more calmly and for one of the couples I explained the cutting of the pork carcass and I had to draw it on the board ... I’m no artist ... seeing how I suffer, and then I soon began to laugh myself above themselves, the guys drew each from the textbook in their notebook as “encore” who will draw better) The main thing is the abstract and interest in learning))) Then there was probably a control that had to be evaluated, but I remembered the previous row of twos. It was a test for me too)) But it worked out .. Only Sasha K. wrote for two, and that was because he cheated. He came to my teacher's office and said: "How so ..?" I answer: "It is necessary to write off less". And he take it and tell me orally word for word. "Sorry, I say, five." And it turns out that I came to work with a temperature, everyone is waiting, I think that I won’t interview everyone, it’s stuffy ... There was the tallest boy in the group, Ilya, and I asked him to open the window, and then the thought comes to mind: table" Everyone is welcome! Evaluated on real knowledge. I say: "Masha, three or retake" "Vasya four or retake." These are real assessments of the guys, their real knowledge. I only tormented one girl for a long time ... she retaken three times for a mark of "three"))) and I put this three all the same "reluctantly". After this year, we broke up, I changed jobs. The guys saw me off for a long time, did not let me go, and even called me in the evening with a group to the park to arrange a farewell for me))) Guys, I'm sorry ...))) Then I found out that Sasha K. worked as a chef in a cool restaurant, but .. due to some circumstances, he quit and works as a freight forwarder ... Eh, Sasha ... I am now, let's say, an office worker in this area now, papers are my "love"))) And I don’t just throw away any papers, remembering my mother’s receipts) )) And under this New Year I met the mother of that girl whom I taught to write letters and numbers with chalk on the garage as a child. She took her granddaughter to the Christmas tree and told me thank you very much for her daughter, that it was probably thanks to me that she loved to study and now she has a good job)

My husband is from the Baltics. I am the Central Black Earth region of Russia)) When we got married, I will not forget our first gathering to visit. Gathered for a long time))) Came to the guests. Those ask why we take so long. He replies, mimicking me:
- I'll make up "G" uby ("g" hacking)
I pick him up and, in his manner, drawlingly continue:
-What-that l-i-f-t coppernnnnnnnnnnno e-d-e-t ....

Recently, in a discussion, I hinted at the fact that 100 Japanese yen is placed in a Soviet 20 kopeck coin, they asked me to tell.

This was our first sea foreign. practice. The passenger motor ship "Khabarovsk" stood on the line Nakhodka-Yokohama-Nakhodka, and basically took transit round-the-world tourists, who had already reached from Australia to Japan, to the Trans-Siberian Railway.
There were three of us, cadets admitted to the state as mechanics, Sunduk, Vava and me. Those who come from the Soviet sixties can imagine the euphoria of twenty-year-old boys who first found themselves behind the cordon in 1984.

Because of this, my first visit to Japan was especially sad for me.
In the morning, it was announced over the loudspeaker that the crew not busy with shifts was offered a choice of two options for leaving ashore. Either savages, groups of three to five people under the supervision of one of the commanders, around Yokohama, or on an embassy tourist bus on an excursion to Tokyo.

The chest with Vava was already walking around Yoka by lunchtime, and I stayed on the ship with the Tokyo group to wait for the bus.
We waited long and nervously, but the bus never came for us. Parking lots are short. Saying goodbye to the cloudy and stuffy Yokohama port for ten days, we headed back.

The chest with Vava was overflowing with emotions from their Japanese adventures, and splashed them out on me with pleasure:
-Lech! - They were already nostalgic, interrupting each other.
- It's full ...! The shopping street is all in tiles and carpets from shops right on the street. And huge baskets of jeans and sneakers on sale!
But their most exciting adventure was the attack on the vending machines with drinks.

Vava's older brother, being a sailor, shared this secret with him.
It turns out that a 20-kopeck Soviet coin repeats the diameter of a Japanese 100-yen coin - one to one, and although the yen seems to be somewhat more massive to the touch, the machines allegedly take it for their own. Vava filled both pockets with twenty.

On a popular shopping street among sailors in Yokohama, not far from the port, the Chest with Vawa noticed one of the machines, seized the moment when the leader of the group disappeared from view, and put a coin into the slot of the machine.
For 20 kopecks, they managed to buy a loud and very alarming siren, which was issued by a machine gun in response to an assassination attempt, and a hundred meters of sprint from the crime scene to a crowded intersection, where they mingled with the crowd.

On our next visit to Yoku, I nevertheless decided to finish off the issue with Tokyo, and took the risk of booking a double for the tour. The trip took place. Vava went with me, and two of his pockets full of coins went with him. I will skip the description of the entire tour of Tokyo, thank God this will not surprise anyone now, and we will immediately go to these same vending machines on Ginza, to which we were brought late in the evening.

It wasn't even getting dark anymore, leaving the group, Vava and I walked around Tokyo at night.
Instead of the faded GLORY of the CPSU, cute Japanese women winked at us from everywhere in neon, shimmering, hieroglyphs slid along the walls, music sounded, and varnished cars rustled slowly past.

Lech! Vava whispered to me very loudly, - Look!
I looked in the direction of his outstretched hand. Not far away, right at the intersection of two wide streets, fenced on all sides by traffic lights and zebra crossings, a deserted, machine-gun island glowed with lights.
- Hold on! - Vava, poured a bunch of coins into my palm and we ran to the machine guns.

There were no drinks in them. More precisely, we did not know what drinks were there, except for the ones we recognized - cola, coffee, tea and forfeits. All for 100 yen.
Endless rows of multi-colored jars, bottles, boxes, bags and cups looked straight into our souls, offering us, and leaving no choice - to bomb!
I slipped the first twenty kopecks into the slot, and, just in case, prepared to tear my claws. The coin slowly rang through the labyrinth and fell out into the return pocket. The machine was silent.

In the next moment, taking the twenty kopecks launched by Vava at face value, it seemed that the whole island exhaled a magical “K-x-x-x-e!!!”, and lit up with hundreds of red arrows. Vava pressed the first one that came across, and a misted bottle fell dully into the tray.
Bingo! It worked for me as well!

Like win-win slot machines, they groaned vying with each other, offering us to taste the endless samples of the Japanese food industry.
We sucked in a few cans “without leaving the cash register, and stuffing everything that can be stuffed in light summer clothes with cans and bottles, we jumped to the bus. Then, with pleasure, we pleased all our few fellow travelers with soft drinks, and all the way back to Yokohama we tried not to piss.

And there was one more, the last such experience in our next visit.
Yokohama was celebrating its own anniversary that day, and in anticipation of a grandiose one and a half hour fireworks, thousands of Japanese began to gather on the embankment around the maritime station, even from lunch.
We walked around Yoke to our heart's content and returned to the port when it was already dark and the performance was just beginning.

Having found a row of vending machines near a deserted grocery store, not far from our mooring place, we decided to try our luck again. Happened. Already in the rain, with difficulty they dragged two voluminous, spreading paper bags to the ship, and arranged a drink party. For dinner next day it was announced to the crew over the loudspeaker that a large number of Russian and Greek coins had been found in the vending machines of the port store the night before.

In addition, a Japanese representative who arrived on board warned that if the offenders were detained, they would be prosecuted in Japan.
Fearing a search, Vava and I hurriedly gulped down the remaining liquids and threw the cans out the porthole.
And, as they say - ends in the water!

Yes, more! In this story, the question of the ethical nature of our transgression hung. Bad, of course, we did. Read stolen. In justification, I can say that I never stole anything before or after this incident - even the thought did not arise.
It was completely different here - risk, excitement and youthful stupidity. With about the same mood and success, we pounded on the poor soda machines on the Vladivostok embankment.
So let the Japanese say: - Arigato!
Kidding. Now it's embarrassing, of course. Sorry!

We continue to monitor the Dom i Dacha sandbox (https://forum.auto.ru/housing) of the small auto.ru website. AT last time we sent a sketch of how severe Moscow plumbers have cunning glamorous blondes (The story of Tolya SCB and a certain Lena Lenina). Today - a story from Ogresg1 about tailed ones.

Positional fights with nature

Brought to the cats with their mother showed the room for their further temporary residence. There is a minimum necessary set for life - a tray, a feeder with a drinking bowl and one box for all, in my opinion, should personify a hollow, a nest and a cat's house at the same time.
They promised not to drive friends and acquaintances, to keep peace and order, not to listen to music at full volume, to be quieter than water, lower than grass.
Turned off the light and wished Good night: I - to them, and they - to me.
I could not sleep...
Suddenly I hear kittens asking their mother if she is sleeping.
She replies that she is sleeping.
By rumbling, I understand that I'm lying.
The kittens are whispering again - what does she think, and am I sleeping or not.
The cat replied - of course, I'm sleeping.
Then the kittens promised to sleep too, and the cat happily believed.
And it started!

It seems that they didn’t like literally everything in the arrangement of the apartment - both where I put my sneakers, and that I didn’t remove the fleece, but simply threw it on the back of the chair, that fishing rods had no place at all in this corner, they pointed out to the trash can - or it plays with hide and seek with them and hide in the closet, or it will lie on its side and roll over to avoid bedsores, otherwise the cat gods will be angry, showed for a long time how to rustle plastic bags, for about twenty minutes they took out a large rumbling Christmas ball hidden there from under the nightstand, moused in a tray with pellets, and, judging by the sounds, they had already begun to move the furniture ... as I stood up and expressed my displeasure to them.

All the little things quickly annihilated, and when he turned on the light, there was no one else, only the ball was swaying ... A sleepy cat ran up, as if interested in such an early rise, which occurred much earlier than the morning dawn, and adding: "Did you hear? Heard? Or I’m completely heard nothing!"

And so three times a night.

After all, you didn’t explain the rules to each kitten personally - they ran away earlier. So, there is no demand either - the kittens concluded. To justify my rises and squeeze at least some sense out of them, they put them in two corners, since the tray was occupied for a more important matter - mouse training was conducted in it.

He took his mother out into the street - without her approving "moore" kittens hide and do not commit lawlessness.
There was silence and harmony, and I fell asleep.
I had a dream about Electronics, and that every cat has a button, and that it is under the tail, but you need to press it several times with short, biting presses.

The history is old, pedagogical.

Somehow a motley group of classmates gathered in one of the mining towns. It's all the metropolitan sissy who tell tales about how they themselves entered the universities, how much the tutors hired by the mother fought over them, and how they themselves are now, like, great scientists at the papa's faculty. But for the miners' children, everything was simple - good teachers, good friends in the yard and a tough dad with a belt at the ready. For behind every Mozart there is an "evil" parent with rods. As a result, a class of 44 blockheads from a provincial workers' town entered the best metropolitan universities without any tutors. And this despite the fact that the kind Soviet authorities gave the capital's sissy an entrance score of 18-19 out of 25, and for a nonresident proletarian type of cattle as much as 24-25 out of 25. Such was then social justice in a supposedly socialist state. But this is not about this, but about pedagogy.
As always, at the parties of young parents, in the end, they started talking about their kids. And young mothers, interrupting each other, began to brag about the intelligence and ingenuity of their children, for whom it is now time to enroll in first grade. And they, like, they already read like announcers on TV, remember poems by heart, count in their minds like calculators, and dance on the pianos hu_chat Bach in three hands. And then fathers, the children of miners, began to get up one after another, and literally pour obscenities on these mothers. Sha, they said. Listen here, motherfuckers. What did you think, who do you want to raise from our boys and daughters? Imagine your smart and all-knowing child comes to school. And everything is easy for him there, and he knows how and knows everything. What will he get as a result - to fight, to overcome difficulties, to work hard, not to piss in front of obstacles, to fight to win - why, if you are smart and talented from birth and everything is easy and simple. Difficulties are bad, it's good when it's easy, you have to do and live with pleasure and only as you like. And I will like to walk, play, hang out, relax and engage in all sorts of cuisines on the coast of the Indian Ocean. And as a result, you will have dull and weak-willed sissies, who can’t do anything without the help of dads and moms, good for nothing, except to chat with their tongue and penis. The same dull gamble that recently did not allow you to enter universities yourself. Your children - you decide how to strain them and not let them relax. Let them go to sports - wrestling, boxing, hockey, swimming, gymnastics. Those who are not able or have a weak heart - let them enter the coolest schools and go to mathematics, physics, medicine. There is no place for fools. We don't need geeks, we need prodigies for life. Did everyone understand? Execute.

Years have passed. At the conference on aerospace systems, organized by the Boeing Satellite Development Center, an unfamiliar company of young engineers and scientists and we, the old people from different countries, gathered. As always, at such get-togethers, we talked about our kids. And parents, young and not very interrupting each other, began to brag about the intelligence and ingenuity of their children, for whom it is now time to enroll in first grade. And they, like, already read like TV announcers, remember poems by heart, count in their minds like calculators, and dance and make everyone like kittens in a basket. And then one dad gets up, the other and literally begin to repeat the same maxims that you have already read with obscenities. It turned out that these were the children and grandchildren of those same miners. Themselves in their youth wrestlers-classics, swimmers stayers, climbers and rugby players. Thanks to sports and smart, strict dads behind me. Good genes - in principle, they cannot be killed, but they can be spoiled. As Generalissimo Suvorov said - life is a battle, and we are soldiers in this battle. It is hard for a soldier to learn - it will be easy in battle.

All received stories are sorted by the editor into five categories: new main, other new, repeated, copies and all sorts of things. Repeated texts are texts already available in the archive of our site. Stories previously published on other popular sites are sent as copies.
In the current issue of stories: new - 10, repeated - 1, copies - 1, sundries - 2.

Today we will talk about best books ah, which came out in 2015. Our favorite authors never cease to please us and create new masterpieces, and besides this, books that were not in demand before or were simply not understood are being republished. So, we present to you, our dear readers, the 15 best books of 2015. We hope these books add to your 2015 reading list.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years - Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami, one of the most famous authors of our time, presented a new book that immediately became popular among readers.

The main character enters the metropolis. He is still young and amazed at the grandeur of Tokyo. He is scared and delighted, and most importantly, he has a home where he can return at any moment. He had a support in life, until one fine summer day he finds out that his familiar world has collapsed. His stronghold of friendship and harmony has disappeared. It's just wiped off the face of the earth. This news completely changes the life of Tsukuru and he has a difficult future ahead of him and many trials.

Marina - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This book is published in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. The detective novel "Marina" was written in 1997. For almost a decade, the author struggled to get the book published, as many counterfeit editions came out, sometimes even with completely different text. But, nevertheless, the book found its readers of all ages.

The action of the novel takes place in the 70s of the last century in Barcelona. Spring is on the street. The main character, Oscar, disappeared for a whole week. All this time, relatives, friends, acquaintances, teachers and the police were looking for him. Where has he been all that time? To this question, Oscar simply replies that every person has a secret. Then he begins to tell an amazing story about a meeting with a mysterious girl Marina.

"All the way to the ends" - Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk once again pleases his fans with an incredible story. The apocalyptic novel of the king of the counterculture will tell, and most importantly, will clearly demonstrate hundreds of new opportunities for achieving female pleasure. On this book, however, as on all other books of the author, there is an age mark of 18+.

Penny Harigan is an ordinary secretary who, by chance, attracted the attention of mega-billionaire Linus Maxwell.

Linus in very narrow circles is known under the nickname "Boy for menopause" and he loves rich, sophisticated ladies very much. But he invites Penny to dinner and after dinner drags her to a hotel room, where he gives her pleasures for several days in a row that she had never dreamed of before. Everything would be fine if Penny did not accidentally find out that she was part of an experiment to develop a new line of sex toys for ladies. These toys will be sold all over the world, and women will satisfy their base sexual desires every free minute. Penny decides to stop Linus and prevent him from gaining world erotic domination over all women.

Una and Salinger - Frederic Begbeder

And again a book with an age limit of 18+. The author himself defined the genre of this book as “faction”: from the English “fact” (“fact”) plus “fiction” (“fiction”). In New York City in 1940, young author Jerry Salinger meets Una O'Neill, the daughter of a famous playwright. He is 21 and she is only 15 years old. Love, passion and an idyll that lasted only a few days until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, after which the United States enters World War II. Jerry goes to war, and Oona auditions for a Charlie Chaplin movie.

Una becomes the wife of a famous comedian.

Salinger went through the war. Punch through your publications in Big world literature and wrote main novel of his life "The Catcher in the Rye".

But, the most interesting thing is that the book is not about that. The author tells a beautiful story about the meeting of Una and Jerry, which turned into a separation for life. About the meeting that defined the lives of these people.

“Third humanity. Voice of the Earth - Bernard Werber

Bernard Werber continues his social-fiction cycle "The Third Humanity" with a new book "Voice of the Earth".

The action of the book takes place against the backdrop of an imminent apocalypse. While all mankind is preparing for the third World War, Gaia - Mother Earth is going to destroy people. But humans and microhumans pay no heed to her warnings.

Ecologists are not able to speak on behalf of the Earth. They can only see the near future. To understand what is happening to the planet, human rights activists environment decide to ask the Mother herself what she thinks about people and everything that happens.

The answer of Mother Earth will help people to evolve again, to make a huge leap in development. After all, the desire to survive, and most importantly to live, is the best motivation for evolution.

"Planet Water" - Boris Akunin

The collection of Boris Akunin has been republished again and contains a large number of illustrations. The collection contains three detective stories.

"Planet Water" was written in 1903 and has the subtitle "technocratic detective".

Erast Fandorin leaves the search for a sunken galleon with gold to help catch a maniac who is hiding on one of the islands of the Atlantic Ocean.

The nostalgic detective story "The Lonely Sail" saw the light of day in 1906. Erast Petrovich is investigating the murder of his former lover.

The last detective in this collection is called "Where do we go?" and is idiotic. Fandorin investigates a train robbery. A trace that stretches to the revolutionaries themselves.

"Castle of Glass" Jeannette Walls

This is an autobiographical novel where the writer talks about her past.

Jeannette talks about her difficult childhood in a large family, where very, very shocking and cruel methods of raising children were practiced. For many years, the author hid her past, until she realized that as soon as she freed herself from the burden of the past and terrible secrets, shame and hatred, she could move on and live in peace.

The sea is my brother. The Lone Wanderer - Jack Kerouac

This year, Jack Kerouac's collection was released, which contains two novels, The Sea Is My Brother and The Lonely Wanderer.

The Sea is My Brother is the first novel of the writer, which was considered lost for half a century. It was only published in 2011. "The Lonely Wanderer" gained popularity during the life of the writer. "The Lonely Wanderer" is a travelogue. And "The Sea is My Brother" is based on the writer's experience when he worked on a merchant ship. These two works reflect the style of the writer and, most importantly, betray the amazing atmosphere of the life of past years. This year, the writer's work is increasingly in demand by readers.

"Half Code" - Sally Green

This book has become the most anticipated in 2015. It is somewhat reminiscent of the story of Harry Potter, but in some ways this book is new and unique. One fact cannot be argued - this book opens up a fantastic world of adventure and magic.

In England these days magicians live side by side with the Fanes and ordinary people. The latter do not even realize the existence of magic. In the world of magicians, the council of White Witches controls the power, which hates half-breeds and monitors the purity of magical blood.

The main character is the half-breed Nathan. Mother is a white witch and father is a black sorcerer. A real hunt begins for Nathan and he has no choice but to run. He wants to find his father and receive three gifts that should help him find his Gift. But can Nathan hide his plans from the Council when he is constantly being watched and his entire family is in mortal danger?

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

Surely, you have already seen this novel on the shelves of bookstores. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize, and the Amazon online store named this work "Book of the Year".

Donna Tartt has been working on this book for over 10 years.

A book about art and how it affects our lives. At the center of the action is 13-year-old Theo Decker. He alone remained alive after a terrible explosion that claimed the lives of his relatives. Theo gets into the system and is now destined to wander around foster families and shelters. His only consolation and meaning of life was the masterpiece of the Dutch old master, which he stole from the museum. This work of art can lead to the death of a lonely child.

"All the Light We Cannot See" - Anthony Dorr

The novel “All the Light We Cannot See” was released quite recently and only a couple of weeks ago appeared on the shelves of bookstores in Russian. The author did an incredible job of creating a book that lasted ten years.

A novel about two children who, unknowingly, follow different paths, but go towards each other. A blind French woman and a timid German boy. They are trying to survive in a world where the Second World War. They are trying to survive and not lose their human face, feelings and emotions, they are trying to save their soul. A book about death and love. A book about war and what it does with ordinary people how crippling not only physically and morally. A book about how invisible light can defeat even darkness.

Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

The 2013 Booker Prize-winning novel has been published for the first time in Russian. This book broke two records of this award at once. The Luminaries is not only the most ambitious work of the award, but the author has also become the youngest laureate.

The novel is set in New Zealand at the height of the gold rush. 12 people got together to discuss some rather strange events that happened to them. A young guy who owns a huge share of the plots has gone missing. The prospector died and a treasure was found in his hut, and the "night moth" embarked on the path of correction. The conspirators tell everything to a stranger who happened to be among them. At the same time, rather strange stories are told, among which there is blackmail and revenge, and even a seance. The whole book is built according to the astrological structure and the more interesting it is to read this detective novel full of mysticism and mysterious events.

“Three apples fell from the sky” - Narine Abgaryan

Narine Abgaryan is an Armenian writer who writes about her country and its people. One of the most famous books of this writer is Manyunya.

And in the year of the centenary of the Armenian genocide, the author released a new book that tells about a small village lost somewhere in the mountains and the people who live there. This is a wonderful book about Armenia, traditions, love, death and the intertwining of human destinies. And most importantly, this is a book about incredible fortitude and treasures of the soul.

"September Roses" - André Maurois

André Maurois is considered a classic of French literature of the 20th century. Author famous biographies Hugo, Balsa, Dumas and others.

"I Confess" - Jaume Cabre

The book was written in 2011, but was published in Russian and in 19 other languages ​​only in 2015.

Antique shop in Barcelona, ​​where among the many valuable things there is an old violin. Adria, secretly from her father, replaces the violin with her own, after which his father is killed. Adria feels guilty. Many years later, he becomes a scientist and collector, but the mystery of his father's murder has not been solved, and may soon disappear forever. In addition, Adria is afraid that the love of his life, Sarah, will also disappear. He writes a diary, his confession, because he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Forbes Life has compiled a calendar for the release of the main book novelties of this year

Readers are waiting for the continuation of the novel by Alexei Ivanov "Tobol", the "dislike trilogy" by Elena Ferrante, the second book by Guzel Yakhina and the long-awaited novel by Arundati Roy. Booker 2017 winner Lincoln in the Bardot, Richard Russo's Pulitzer novel Empire Falls, and new short stories by Anna Gavalda will be published in Russian. The Forbes Life gallery contains the most interesting novelties of 2018 in accordance with the plan for their release on sale.

Aleksey Ivanov. "Tobol. Few Chosen"

Publisher: Edited by Elena Shubina

Release date: February

"Tobol. Few Chosen” is the second book of Alexei Ivanov’s peplum novel “Tobol”. Fugitive schismatics erect their fiery Ship, Russian regiments go for gold to the distant Asian city of Yarkand, a stubborn metropolitan makes his way to the sacred idol of foreigners through the evil haze of taiga paganism, and the Siberian governor finds himself in the hands of the sovereign. The fates of the heroes are intertwined, and in the fierce struggle between the old and the new, the history of Siberia and the history of the country is born.

Yulia Zaitseva, co-author of the book "Debri" and producer of Alexei Ivanov:“In Ivanov's bibliography, the two-volume Tobol is not only the most voluminous, but also the most daring novel. This is a chess session of simultaneous play on several boards at once, and also blind. You constantly need to keep dozens of lines and destinies in your head, hear the unique melody of each and persistently and progressively move it to the finale. It is difficult to decide on an epic, the names of those who dared are known to every schoolchild: Tolstoy, Sholokhov, Grossman ... And a writer can declare himself in this row only with a large-scale thinking commensurate with the era. Ivanov managed to keep two centuries of the Siberian Conquest in his head, bring the game to the final on all the boards and not lose a single game. In my opinion, he turned out to be a grandmaster novel.

Hanya Yanagihara. "People Among the Trees"

Publisher: corpus

Release date: late February - early March

Translation from English: Viktor Sonkin

After the hotly debated Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara's debut novel is awaited by both readers and critics to confirm or refute their impressions of the harrowing story of the four friends. Hanya Yanagihara wrote the novel "People among the Trees" based on real events. In 1950, a young doctor, Norton Perina, travels to a remote Micronesian island, where people who own the secret of amazing longevity live. Perina manages to find out the nature of this phenomenon, and the results of the research promise a revolution in medicine and incredible prospects for humanity. "However, the transformation of a fairy tale into reality is a painful and terrible process, blurring the boundaries between a feat and a crime." The discovery of Norton Perina turns into a series of disasters: environmental, social and personal.
Yanagihara's novel is based on the story of pediatrician and virologist Daniel Gaiduzek, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine, who was arrested on charges of molesting his adopted children. In an interview, Hanya Yanagihara said more than once that she learned about the history of Gaidusek from her father and she was struck by how cruel and vicious the scientist's brilliant mind can be. "People among the trees" is a novel told from the position of a strong and powerful person. And the book was a success primarily due to the masterfully conveyed voice of evil.

The translator of the novel Viktor Sonkin:“The Russian reader who opens Yanagihara's new book will most likely have a pre-formed expectation based on the experience of A Little Life, which made such a stunning impression here - both on fans and detractors. And indeed, at least one important topic, the topic of child abuse (I don’t scatter spoilers, because literally the entire content of the novel is retold in newspaper articles in the very first lines, the essence of this novel is completely different) is really in the book. But in everything else - in terms of structure, in terms of characters, in terms of a supporting idea - this is a completely different book, not similar to A Little Life. It seems to me that it is especially important that in "A Little Life" the reader meets (at least in the present tense) with a huge number of good, kind, noble people. In "People among the trees" there are no such characters at all, not a single one. It's a real "novel without a hero" in that sense. And at the same time, he talks about some incredibly important things: about the search for scientific truth, about being true to yourself, about death and trying to get away from it. In addition, it is a fascinating adventure novel in its own way; True, I hardly perceive anything else, but I'm used to the fact that connoisseurs of literature, especially Russian literature, can consider that the plot is something outdated and unnecessary in literature. Well, Yanagihara, fortunately, has no such illusions.

Boris Minaev. "Marlboro Cowboy, or Girls of the 80s"

Publisher: Time

Release date: late February - early March

Writer Boris Minaev, finalist of the Russian Booker and Yasnaya Polyana with his novel Soft Fabric, gives the Russian answer to Haruki Murakami. The Japanese novelist, after major prose, delighted readers with a collection of lyrical stories, Men Without Women. Boris Minaev wrote twenty-three personal stories about the lives of young women. Marlboro Cowboy, or Girls of the 80s is a subtle and funny book about youth and how fate is born out of ridiculous accidents.

Boris Minaev: “I have always found it easier to communicate with women than with men. You need to be friends with men in a certain sense - drink heavily, do something together or go to the bathhouse, for example, which I can’t stand, and only then talk. And only on certain topics. With women, you can talk at once and about everything. True, all these optional conversations always have a second, third, fourth, or even a hundred and fourth meaning, which you will not immediately understand, but it is also very exciting. From these conversations, or rather, from their stories, my book was born. Our generation lives in it, and, slightly glaring, is reflected whole era, which formally began in the 1980s, but in fact even earlier, but for some reason still does not want to end. I don't know what that means, maybe we'll all live forever? Actually, that's what I was trying to understand.

Julian Barnes. "One story"

Publisher: ABC-Atticus

Release date: March

Translation from English: Elena Petrova

“Almost all of us have one single story that we want to tell. This does not mean that nothing else happens in life: countless events that can turn into an endless story. But only one will mean anything, only one is worth hearing. And here's my story." With these words he prefaces his new history intellectual Julian Barnes, one of the best modern prose writers.
His new hero, the charming Paul, very much like Barnes himself, begins his story with a philosophical and at the same time very personal question: “Would you like to love more and suffer more, or love less and suffer less?” He recalls the story of his great love, a student summer, when 19-year-old Paul met married 48-year-old Susan - and everything in the world ceased to matter. That “one story” that Paul is willing to tell was a defining event in his life.

"A seemingly completely hermetic, non-sequelable Booker novel 'A Premonition of the End' received an unexpected development in 'One Story'," Forbes Life told editor of the Azbuka publishing house Alexander Guzman. - This is a kind of anatomy of first love, which serves as the key to everything that happens to a person further, until the end of his life. And it’s not for nothing that in a recent interview dedicated to the release of One Story, Barnes referred to Turgenev: “ Let us recall Turgenev, one of the greatest prose writers who wrote about love. The story "First Love" is based on his own youthful experience. At the age of thirteen, he was madly in love with a girl in her twenties, but made a devastating discovery: she was his father's lover. Paul, the hero of my current novel, says that first love leaves its mark on the rest of life: either as an example or as a counterexample.».

June Lee. "Kinder than loneliness"

Publisher: corpus

Release date: March

Translation from English: Leonid Motylev

Kinder than Loneliness is a powerful novel about the burden of memory and the severity of loss. Jun Li, an American writer of Chinese descent, tells the story of three heroes who are connected by a 25-year-old mystery. The story turned out to be about how the past torments the soul, how hundreds of thousands of little things become torture and determine the present and future. As one of the heroes says, "Even the most innocent creature, if cornered, is capable of a heartless attack."

The heroes of Jun Li live far from each other (in America and China), but once all three lived in Beijing and were friends with Shaoai, a daring and independent. After the June events on Tiananmen Square, Shaoai was expelled from the university, and in the autumn the girl died under strange circumstances. For the three friends, Shaoai's death and a painful cocktail of guilt and suspicion become an obsession and fate.

Translator of the novel Leonid Motylev: “I listened to the author of this book last spring in the Moscow Dostoevsky library. By that time, I had read the novel, started translating, and after her speech, I asked her which side she was on: the young rebel Shaoai or the older generation, who believes that “you can’t break a butt with a whip”? She said she didn't know the answer. The reader is left to judge for himself (or refrain from judging). In this book, sad and more subdued than her first poignant novel, Tramps, much is left to the reader. One senses that Lee's true element is the story, and I was not surprised to learn that the author who influenced her very much was the recently deceased William Trevor, Chekhov's heir. Like Trevor, like Chekhov - and maybe in tradition Eastern literature, - Lee gives the reader signals without pedaling them, encouraging them to inner work to empathy and understanding. The one who got to recent chapters novel, for example, he himself must understand why the heroine reacts so strangely to words about chilling the skin. And, if we talk about major topics, the reader may think about memory. The memory of the trauma of the events in Tiananmen Square is not alive and not dead, like a poisoned one, dragging out an intermental existence of Shaoai.

George Saunders. "Lincoln in the Bardo"

Publisher: Eksmo

Release date: March

Translation from English: Grigory Krylov

58-year-old Texan George Saunders with the novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" in the fall of 2017 won the Booker Prize for Literature for a novel about American President. It is based on one night in the life of Abraham Lincoln. The president's 11-year-old son, Willie, is buried in a marble vault at Georgetown Cemetery. A heartbroken father arrives at the cemetery under cover of night to be with his son. And Willy himself finds himself between the dead and the living, in a ghostly world inhabited by the shadows of the past. Actually, bardo (literally, “between two”) in Buddhism means that very intermediate state between that world and this one. Complaints, cries, lamentations and groans of those around Willy dos Saunders alternate with a collage of historical documents and books, invented and real, so that the boy's life is shown against the backdrop of the political events of that time. Real, no fools fiction novel all this postmodern cutting is done by an elderly Texan, an amazing stylist, a master of well-aimed aphoristic statements, accurate observations and capacious conclusions.

“The novel is called experimental by criticism,” Forbes Life explained. Head of Foreign Prose Department, Eksmo Publishing House Julia Rautbort, - and indeed, it is interesting not only in terms of content, but also in terms of form, which a thoughtful reader will certainly appreciate. First of all, it seems to me that it attracts with its pronounced humanistic orientation. Saunders said that when he heard the story of the death of President Lincoln's son, he immediately had an image that combines the Lincoln Memorial and Michelangelo's Pieta (a sculpture of the Virgin Mary mourning Christ). President Lincoln, who in the minds of the majority - national hero America, the country's president, appears in Saunders' novel as an inconsolable father mourning his beloved son. This plot motif allows the author to reach a global generalization: what is death and how it should be treated.

“If we talk about Saunders’ search in the field of form, then it must be said: with every page, every line, the author tests the possibilities of the word, the limits of what is permissible: are the means used to convey the author’s thought to the reader, where is the border beyond which the form becomes not a means, but selfish, he said novel translator Grigory Krylov. - For a translator, such a book is both a challenge, and pleasure, and mortal torment: in every sentence, dangers and difficulties lie in wait; I hope that with the help of editors and proofreaders they were overcome with varying degrees of success.

Ann Tyler. "Adopting America"

Publisher: Phantom Press

Release date: Spring

Translation from English: Love Sums

Perhaps the deepest and most intense novel by Anne Tyler, one of the main American writers of our time, already well known to the Russian reader thanks to Spool of Blue Thread and The Accidental Tourist. Adopting America is a story that shows the United States from two perspectives: people born and raised there, and migrants who came to a foreign country and fell in love with it.

“A book about what it means to be an American. Two families who would never have met in ordinary life collide at the airport: the Native American Donaldsons and the Yazdan spouses, of Iranian origin, Forbes Life told Chief Editor Phantom Press publishing house Igor Alyukov. - Both couples are waiting for the arrival of the baby girls they adopted from Korea. The children arrive and the adults decide to celebrate the first anniversary together. It becomes a tradition - two families meet once a year, and gradually their destinies are intertwined. The novel is full of light, tenderness, amazing observations of life.

Guzel Yakhina. "My children"

Publisher: Edited by Elena Shubina

Release date: end of April - beginning of May

My Children is the second book by the young writer Guzel Yakhina, winner of the Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana awards for her debut novel Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes. A new novel by Yakhina about the history of the Volga Germans in the first half of the 20th century. After severe trials, Jacob Bach, school teacher turned away from the world and took a vow of silence. My only daughter He grows Anche on a secluded farm, in the wilderness of the steppe. He lives quietly and calmly, writes fairy tales and seeks peace. But fairy tales schulmeister Bach are strangely embodied in reality - "and the mute hermit becomes a demiurge against his will, capable of changing the surrounding reality with the power of imagination." But does this gift preserve him? Is Jacob allowed to write his own destiny and save himself and his loved ones? From the all-destroying rage, confusion, chaos and cruelty, talent and love can hardly save, but there is nothing more to hope for in a terrible hour.

At the request of Forbes Life Guzel Yakhina introduced new novel and answered whether there was fear of the second novel after the huge success of Zuleikha: “There were fears, of course. The attraction of Zuleikha's story was very great, and I understood that the new novel would be treated much more strictly. Perhaps that is why one of the central motives in the novel "My Children" was the overcoming of fear. If we talk about the philosophy of the novel, for me this story is primarily about the mythological nature of consciousness: no matter what happens in a person’s life, he will look for and find familiar images and archetypes. The protagonist, a Russian German by the name of Bach, is a witness and participant in the early Soviet era, he sees German folklore stories in what is happening. German fairy tales come alive in 1920s and 1930s settings. 24 years of existence of the German autonomy on the Volga are turning into a figurative code for what was happening in the country. I wanted to talk about the world of the German Volga region - bright, original, alive. About the world, once created by newcomers in a foreign country, and today lost in the past. But it is also a universal story: about the love of a man for a woman, about the passionate love of a father for his daughter, about how great love gives rise to fears in our hearts and at the same time helps to overcome these fears.

Oleg Ermakov. "Rainbow and Heather"

Publisher: Time

Release date: Spring

Oleg Ermakov, laureate of the Yasnaya Polyana Prize for the simultaneously melodic and detective twisted Song of the Tungus, wrote a historical novel about his native Smolensk, which the Poles once called the castle O m, and the Russians - a fortress in the west of their kingdom. In the spring of 1632, a young gentry Nikolaus Vrzosek came here, and in February 2015, a Moscow wedding photographer, Pavel Kostochkin. Both peer with curiosity at the outlines of the castle-fortress and love awaits both: one - for the granddaughter of an icon painter and herbalist, the other - for someone else's bride.

About how two private stories are fused together, told Forbes Life himself Oleg Ermakov: “In a provincial town, our contemporary, a metropolitan wedding photographer, comprehends living history- past and present. This comprehension is spiritualized by the feeling of love. Approximately the same thing happened four hundred years ago with a Polish gentry who arrived in a remote castle of the Commonwealth - in the Smolensk fortress, where at the same time the ancestors of the great Russians: Glinka and Tvardovsky served the crown. And where did the ancestor of Yuri Lermontov, the Scottish captain Lermontov, lay down his head. Smolensk is like a meeting place between East and West, a city where “Toledo” people, who profess Russian Quixoteism, arrange their tea parties. The city, which sings with clay calcined in the fire, becomes the fate of both the nobleman Nikolaus Vrzhosek and the metropolitan photographer Pavel Kostochkin.

“The plasticity of writing is amazing, protecting the honor of classical Russian prose,” writes in Novy Mir literary critic Irina Rodnyanskaya- from the frosty winter in the Smolensk forest, the blood runs cold, and you involuntarily wrap yourself up, sitting in a heated room. The genius of the place breathes in a multitude of authenticities (the fruit of observational imagination, not pedantic study): from the tactful multilingualism of the book (Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish replicas and sayings; the title is a translation from the Belarusian and Polish names of the heroine and hero) breathes with a very special color of the border region, which wean from historical and political superficiality. But this is not the main thing. The novel is an adventure novel in the sense in which people are used to thinking about the novels of Walter Scott and, not without looking back at them, about Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter.

Chloe Benjamin. "Immortals"

Publisher: Phantom Press

Release date: Spring

Translation from English: Marina Izvekova

This is a novel about the unpredictability of life, about personal choice and about what determines fate more: family and roots, or a complete separation from them.

New York, 1969 In the Lower East Side, a rumor has spread about the appearance of a mysterious psychic woman who predicts people the day they will die. Four young Golds - from seven to thirteen years old - out of curiosity are sent to find out the future fate. Varya, the eldest of the children, extends her last hand to the fortune teller. Looking at her palm, the woman breaks into a smile: "Oh, you will be fine, you will die in 2044." The happy girl goes out into the street, and there the gloomy brothers and sister are already waiting.

“In the coming decades, the prophecies will begin to come true,” Forbes Life told editor Igor Alyukov. - The fate of children will be bizarre. Simon Gold will run away to San Francisco, where he will lead a bohemian life. Clara, after meeting with a fortune teller, will plunge deeper into dreams every year, not distinguishing too much between her fantasies and reality. Daniel, a born leader, will make a career as a military doctor. And Varya… Varya will devote herself to studying the problem of immortality, balancing between science and fiction. A novel of amazing depth about the connection between inevitability and freedom of choice, about the interweaving of illusion and reality, about the strength of family ties and the forces that tear them apart. Great book, just great."

Arundati Roy. "Ministry of Supreme Happiness"

Publisher: AST

Release date: May

Translation from English: Alexander Anvaer

After the debut and very powerful novel The God of Small Things, which delighted Julian Barnes and John Updike, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy remained silent for two decades. All these years she was actively engaged in social and political activities, but did not write fiction. Arundhati Roy, in her own words, persuaded her friend, 1972 Booker laureate John Berger, to turn the new idea into the novel The Ministry of Highest Happiness. British publishers are unanimous: the second work of Arundhati Roy is "an amazing, multi-layered book - perhaps the best novel we have read in last years».

"This is an amazing book," Forbes Life confirmed. novel translator Alexander Anvaer. - The author managed to dispel the myth created by the famous sentimental "Indian" films and the ancient delusions of European travelers. India is by no means only "incense, jewels and gods." From the very first lines, the reader is confronted with the frightening reality of being marginals, the caste contradictions that still exist, despite the legislative ban, separatism, which at the first opportunity climbs from all cracks. There is a feeling of hopelessness, but it miraculously dissipates with further reading. The thing is that the author loves his characters. Each character is written out, molded with love - even to the last scoundrel and scoundrel, whom the author presents as a living person. After a few dozen pages, you stop perceiving India and its people as something exotic. You see people just like you. And in this realism, authenticity, irony, sincerity, optimism, the guarantee of the long life of this and similar books.

“The Ministry of Supreme Happiness” is a difficult novel, but you won’t forget it, - comments the head of the department of translated genre literature Irina Arkharova. - "The Ministry of the Highest Happiness", like a Persian carpet woven from different stories. Whether it is the life of an untouchable hijra and a foundling girl with their incredible and impossible love, or the life of a militant Musa, who lost his daughter and wife, who sacrifices love for a woman for the sake of an ideal. And I think that, despite the complexity and dissimilarity of the characters and the sometimes active demonstration of the author's political views, this unusual and very difficult novel should have been published in Russian.

Elena Ferrante. "Lost Daughter"

Publisher: Sinbad

Release date: spring Summer

Translation from Italian: Olga Tkachenko

Good news for fans of the Neapolitan Quartet: Ferrante's fever continues. In the new season, the Sinbad publishing house promises to publish three early novels by the most mysterious Italian writer - a conditional "dislike trilogy". In addition to The Lost Daughter, translations of the books Troubling love (working title Obsessive Love) and The Days of Abandoment (working title Days of Solitude) are waiting for us.

“These are three stories that are not related to each other,” explains Irina Bachkalo, Deputy General Director of Sinbad Publishing House, - only the unique style of Ferrante remains in common: it is as if she puts a large mirror in front of us and helps us see our own destiny in the life of distant Neapolitan women.

The main character of the novel "The Lost Daughter" Leda is forty-seven years old, she has just gained freedom: her daughters have finally grown up and left for Canada to live with their father. Ledoux is not at all burdened by parting with children and loneliness: finally, peace and cleanliness at home and plenty of time for himself and his favorite work. The heroine rents an apartment on the Ionian coast for a month and a half to bask in the sun, leisurely read books, write articles. However, there is an activity on the beach more interesting than books. Leda is watching a large and not too friendly family of her fellow Neapolitans and cannot take her eyes off the little girl, her young mother and the ugly doll, to which both pay too much attention ... This strange trinity makes Leda commit an absolutely inexplicable act and invade someone else's life, and at the same time completely rethink your own.

“Naples, a doll, a frighteningly sincere confession of the heroine-narrator - we have before us the creative workshop of Ferrante, - comments the editor-in-chief of the Sinbad publishing house Elena Golovina. - In The Lost Daughter, a reader familiar with the story of Lila and Lenu will probably guess the sketches for the Neapolitan Quartet. At the same time, this is an independent, deep, full-blooded text that explores in detail the topic of motherhood in its most dramatic aspects.

Anna Gavalda. "Fendre l'armure"

Publisher: AST

Release date: May-June

After several novels, Anna Gavalda finally takes up again the short story with which she once burst into literature, releasing an amazingly powerful collection “I wish someone was waiting for me somewhere.” In the new seven short stories, her sensitivity, empathy, the ability to reveal her characters and make them not just speak, but live, are again manifested.

“Anna Gavalda was always not averse to going into the shadows and giving the characters, partly invented by her, partly taken directly from life, to speak with their own voices and independently tell about their turmoil, sorrows and hopes, - Dmitry Rumyantsev, Leading Editor of Translated Literature of the Zhanry Editorial Board, tells. - In the new collection, which includes seven short and not so short stories, she creates (auto) portraits of people from various social strata with extraordinary skill, each time adjusting the language to a new character and widely drawing from colloquial and even jargon vocabulary. All these people have one thing in common: fate did not spare them. They feel bad, lonely, hurt, and they are tired of pretending that everything is in order. They are ready to bare their wounded hearts to the first person they meet, including the reader, and try to gain thanks to this, if not confidence in the future happiness, then at least a little peace of mind and readiness to accept the next battles with honor.

The heroes of Gavalda talk about loneliness, the pain of loss, the magic of meetings and the power of love - they come to the reader "with an open visor", trusting the most fragile moments of life, when everything literally falls apart and you need to find the strength in yourself to start from scratch. Among them is a young man who has just attended his ex-girlfriend's wedding and is on the train home, slightly drunk and devastated; overwhelmed with thoughts of a missing friend, a businessman ruining a minibar in a hotel room in Seoul; a truck driver who has lost his son and is crying out his grief to a dog; the father of the family, called to the school by an angry headmistress ... They all want one thing - to be heard.

Here's what she said about the collection herself Anna Gavalda: “I could say that this is a collection of short stories, stories - there are seven of them in total, and they are written in the first person - but I see the book differently. For me, these are not stories and, to a lesser extent, characters, for me they are people. Real people. There is Lyudmila, Paul, Jean! The rest don't have names. They just say "I". Almost everyone talks about themselves at night, in their state it is difficult to understand what time of day it is. They need to speak out in order to clarify a lot for themselves, they are completely open, trusting, they destroy the armor. Not everyone succeeds, but I was touched by the way they tried to do it. It is rather pretentious of me to say that the characters I invented touched me, but I repeat to you once again: for me there are no characters here - only people, completely real people, and it is them that I entrust to you today.

Sebastian Faulks. "Engleby"

Publisher: Sinbad

Release date: May June

Translationfrom English: Maria Makarova

One of the most widely read British novelists, a master of subtle psychological writing, the creator of "And the birds sang ..." and "Where my heart was beating" suddenly spoke to the reader in a previously unfamiliar voice. This voice, according to Faulks himself, “one morning he heard in his head. He simply reasoned, dictated. I sat down and began to write. I did not know what he wanted, and did not suspect that this was my storyteller. This is how Mike Angleby was born, from whose face the story is going (a kind of confession or diary), a Cambridge student, a native of the "bottom", a lonely sarcastic observer with a phenomenal memory, in which huge gaps gape.

“What has he forgotten and does he want to remember it? Meticulous in trifles, isn't he fooling us - and himself - in the most essential? The reader involuntarily thinks about this when one of the students, whom Mike silently adores from afar, suddenly disappears without a trace. But the narrator becomes the owner of her diary - reveals the details of the plot novel editor Elena Golovina and immediately warns: before us is not a detective at all. - Rather, the writer's next approach to his favorite topic - the tragedy of human existence, the mystery and fragility of the mind, the nature of time. This time from the dark side, invisible to us.

This is perhaps one of Faulks' most difficult novels: the novel is the confession of a student, Mike Angleby, who is suspected of killing his beloved Jennifer. According to The Guardian, "Angleby is the most lively hero to come out of the pen of Sebastian Faulks. Disarmingly weird and insightful."

Zyulfyu Livaneli. "My Brother's Story"

Publisher: Eksmo

Release date: summer

Translation from Turkish: Apollinaria Avrutina

72-year-old Omer Zülfü Livaneli is one of the most successful modern Turkish writers and is also a film director, composer and a bit of a politician. In the 1970s he emigrated from the country for political reasons and lived in Europe until 1984, where he began to write. But the real success of Livaneli was brought by the "Turkish" novel "The Eunuch from Constantinople", and with each new book he became more and more famous. Livaneli is called the Turkish Murakami by literary critics for his ability to combine everyday and eternal in his texts.

“Livanelly is not only a skilled storyteller, but also an insidious manipulator,” Forbes Life told. book editor Julia Chegodaikina.- He deliberately sets traps to confuse the reader, arouse indignation, surprise and admiration. There is not a single superfluous word in “The Story of My Brother”, every detail is in its place and works in right time. The novel is so melodic that it turns the reader into a sensitive listener. And while reading, you even breathe every other time for fear of missing the quietest note.

Starting with a murder and ending with a suicide, Livaneli weaves together stories of the present and the past: a stolen love, a prison dungeon, a disaster, a journey and an impossible escape.

The novel was written five years ago and has already been translated into 37 languages. The book will appear in Russian thanks to the permanent translator of the Turkish Nobel writer Orhan Pamuk Apollinaria Avrutina. At the request of Forbes Life, she spoke about the novel and its author: « Poet and director, prose writer and composer, singer, musician and UNESCO ambassador… Here is just a small list of occupations of one of the most famous Turks after Orhan Pamuk, Zulfyu Livaneli. Livaneli has a lot to do with Russia, he has visited our country more than once, he has been friends with Gorbachev for many decades, but his books will be published in Russian only now. My Brother's Story is perhaps Livaneli's most cinematic novel. A novel that begins, it would seem, with an ordinary detective line, and turns into “1001 nights”, the tales of which lure the reader, making them forget about what exactly lured them into the labyrinth of meanings, signs and images. Fear and pity, curiosity and disgust, surprise and reconciliation - these are just some of the feelings that await the patient listener. The language of the novel is incredibly simple - how simple the language of a storyteller can be - and at the same time this "voice of Scheherazade" beckons and attracts, and the reader does not have time to look around, as all three hundred and a few pages of the novel are behind.

Frederic Begbeder. "Life Without End"

Publisher: ABC-Atticus

Release date: August

Translation from French: Elena Klokova

“Life is a hecatomb. 59 million deaths per year. 1.9 dying every second. 158,857 people die every day. Twenty or more people have died in the world as you read these lines, if you read slowly. Why should we endure this carnage under the pretense of the natural process of the flow of life? Before, I rarely thought about death. With age, such thoughts take possession of me more and more often, ”Frederic Begbeder wrote in the preface to a new fiction novel.

The curly-haired charismatic advertiser from "99 francs" and "Ideal" has matured, an unreasonable young man, confident that love lives for three years, has passed the stage of a romantic egoist and even managed to sum up the first results of the end of the world. Fifty-two-year-old Begbeder is no longer obsessed with entertainment, business, beautiful girls and club life, he is no longer worried about the age of love, but age itself is damn scary. When there is success and money, you want to stay forever young even more.

Here's what Forbes Life said Galina Solovieva, editor of the Azbuka publishing house: “Bad news: this is not a novel, this is an essay about gaining immortality for a loved one. The good news is that it's great that this isn't a novel. If you are not too immersed in the topic of life extension, then it is informative. Show off is in place, but still it is felt that our Begbeder is getting wiser ... From the new FB novel, one can extract a dozen and a half cynical and ironic phrases that are perfect for further quoting. He succeeds in aphorisms.

And here are the most interesting quotes from book:

"At fifty, death ceases to be an abstraction."

“Until fifty you run in the crowd, then the crowd thins out, and you stop rushing.”

"Religion- this is a spa for the soul.”

"Parents are our shield in the face of death."

“There is a thing that I cannot understand: to drive a car, you need to get a license, but to create a new life, you don’t. Any idiot can be a father."

Ali Smith. "Autumn"

Publisher: Eksmo

Release date: August

Translation from English: Valery Nugatov

Ali Smith's lyrical novel "Autumn", shortlisted for last year's "Booker" and just a little behind "Lincoln in the Bardo", is the first of four of Smith's so-called seasonal quartet. She does not hide the fact that she planned to write three more novels: "Spring", "Summer" and "Winter" - "about how time passes and how we live it, changing with it." And in this sense, "Autumn" is a very modern text: Ali Smith writes about the events of today - from Brexit to contemporary artists. But at the same time, Autumn will be the last to be called a novel about understanding the current political situation. Yes, the smallest signs of society's deformation do not escape Ali Smith's attentive gaze, but a melodic, very beautiful, even poetic novel is primarily about the autumn of life and, of course, about love.

Novel editor Dmitry Obgolts: “I would like to call the novel poetic, if the word “poetry” when describing prose was not perceived rather with a negative connotation, like that free-flowing prose, where there is a lot of sublimity, but little substance. “Autumn”, on the contrary, is full of that invisible substance that we call either the fabric of life, or the essence of being, or the material from which we and everything around us are made. Smith's book is one of those rare cases where formal lyricism retains prosaic weight.

Richard Russo. "Empire Falls"

Publisher: Phantom Press

Release date: summer autumn

Translation from English: Elena Poletskaya

68-year-old Richard Russo is one of the most prominent modern American authors, but due to some misunderstanding, his books have never been published in Russian. Meanwhile, almost all of Rousseau's novels have been filmed: for example, the film based on the novel No Fools with Paul Newman and Bruce Willis has become a classic of cinema.

Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls in 2002. This is the story of Miles Rob, the humble manager of the nondescript cafe Empire Grill. Miles spent his entire life in the small town of Empire Falls, Maine. There have been better days here once, but the logging is no longer going on, the factories are failing, and things are getting worse in the city. Even the once powerful Whiting clan, by and large, had only its former glory and decaying real estate. Miles himself has problems with his wife and not everything is going smoothly at work, he knows that he is unlikely to be able to seriously change his life, but at least he can maintain decency and adequately raise his adored teenage daughter. "Empire Falls" - very personal and at the same time not chamber, but almost epic social romance. Richard Russo shows our best and worst qualities, our own fears and hopes with the grace and compassion of a true master.

“By taking on the publication of Rousseau’s Pulitzer novel, we hope that the writer will have the same successful Russian fate as Anne Tyler, with whom they are, in a sense, literary relatives,” Forbes Life told dPhantom Press Director Alla Shteinman. - The novels of Richard Russo are deep family tragicomedies. A sad and funny story about the inhabitants of a small town that once prospered, but now fell into decay. Most of its inhabitants barely make ends meet, and their life is a continuous "Groundhog Day". Miles Robie, like everyone else in Empire Falls, has known better days, but has long been just drifting - alas, from bad to worse. Running his run-down diner, he not only observes the life of the town, he is a witness to the passing era. Empire Falls is run by the heiress of a wealthy family, a domineering and cruel lady, who enjoys pulling the strings that bind everything here. And Miles Robie flutters on one of these threads. There is also terrible secrets, and universal tragedies, and a lot of humor, but most importantly, warm irony permeates the entire book.

Gabriel Talent. "My Absolute Darling" (working title - "The one who is definitely dear")

Publisher: Sinbad

Release date: autumn winter

Translation from English: Maria Stepanova

A literary debut that became a global best-seller in 2017, the heart-warming story of a teenage girl's childhood growing up. A powerful novel about addiction, cruelty and painful love against the backdrop of the confrontation between civilization and wildlife.
“You need to experience the nearness of death before you begin to truly live, and accept your life as a blessing,” Martin Alveston advises his 14-year-old daughter. Any other girl would find this advice monstrous, but she accepts it with gratitude. Her father taught her to shoot at the age of six, she knows how to make a fire and drive a truck, by order of her father she can cut off the finger of an annoying visitor.
Her father teaches her everything he knows, he methodically puts in her hands a weapon with which her daughter will be able to destroy him. But until she grows up, her father manipulates her with fear, love and shame. As translator Anastasia Zavozova wrote on her blog, “the girl lives in psychological captivity, opens canned food with her teeth, drinks raw eggs and loves her father to death. The only question is: until whose death?

“From what I have read in recent years, this novel made the strongest impression on me,” Forbes Life told Irina Bachkalo, who bought the rights to the novel for the Sinbad publishing house.-A very difficult read with scenes that are not easy to read, but it's like you're in charge of a 14-year-old heroine who lives in the middle of nowhere with her manipulative father - you can't leave her. You want her to win. This is one of the most talked about books of the year, very highly acclaimed by critics and included in all lists of major novels. The book that split the reader's camp. "My Absolute Darling" is not a reading for sensitive young ladies. And as Stephen King said, the concept of "masterpiece" today is highly discredited by frequent use, and should be used only in exceptional cases; "My Absolute Darling" is a masterpiece. This is a book that cannot leave you indifferent - you will either love it or hate it. By the strength of the impact on the global readership, a comparison with "A Little Life" suggests itself, but the story itself is much thinner and more poignant. My Absolute Darling is a book you won't forget."

Maya Lunde. "History of the Bees"

Publisher: Phantom Press

Release date: autumn-winter

Translation from Norwegian: Anastasia Naumova

Crossed with family saga and philosophical romance, this dystopia is already being translated into more than 30 languages. "The Story of the Bees" - the loudest Norwegian novel last decade, he won almost all national literary awards and has already become not only a Scandinavian bestseller, but also one of the most beloved books in Germany. This is the first book in Maya Lunde's ambitious tetralogy about the fragility of the balance of the universe and the place of man in it.

“But A History of the Bees is not really a history of bees at all,” explains Maija Lunde. Phantom-Press editor-in-chief Igor Alyukov. - It becomes clear already on the first page. The not too distant future, the end of our century. Chinese woman Tao pollinates fruit trees by hand. Manually, because there are no bees in the world for a long time. And the world has changed irreversibly since their disappearance. It seems that we are facing a dystopia. But this is not a dystopia. Because the following story is about the inventor of a new type of hive, living in the 19th century. In fact, the "History of Bees" is the story of people-bees, the story of families in which a very complex relationship between parents and children gradually results in a transformation family relations generally. In the novel by Norwegian Maya Lunde, three family stories - Victorian, modern and futuristic - add up to a big story about the relationship between mother nature and her negligent child - humanity. This is the first novel in the tetralogy of modern world, bordering on the world of the future, a very frightening place.