Pushkin Press imprint: 146 books

Dino is a placid, unambitious man. Living in a small provincial town, he and his wife spend their time planning journeys to faraway places - journeys they never take. Dino's only passion is billiards, and he spends his evenings in the local billiards hall honing his technique. One day, however, Dino's...

This is one of Couperus's most powerful novels. A brilliant observer of fin-de-siècle Dutch society, his works are characterised by perfect characterisation, exquisite description and a mordant wit, which brought comparisons to Oscar Wilde.

Set in Java at the height of Dutch colonial rule in the East Indies, Couperus’s evocative and sensual narrative depicts the clash between Western rationalism, represented by the district commissioner Otto van Oudijck, and ancient indigenous mystical traditions upheld by the local native prince,...

It was a memorable summer: with the broken-down old road that suddenly turned into a strip of gleaming asphalt, and the abandoned motorbike the three boys found as a rusty heap and built into a racer. But it was also more than that, more than a distraction from the boredom of their small Tuscan town,...

It was not easy to be a sportswoman at the end of the nineteenth century. Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, said in 1896: "No matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism is not cut out to sustain certain shocks." Women competed in the Olympics for the...

Coco Chanel invited Paul Morand to visit her in St Moritz at the end of the Second World War when he was given the opportunity to write her memoirs; his notes of their conversations were put away in a drawer and only came to light one year after Chanel's death. Through Morand's transcription of their...

The French Father centres on a dialogue between two men buried alongside each other in the Parisian cemetery of Montparnasse – now companions in the afterlife. One man, the author’s father, is strict, upper middle class, and a firm believer in the values and principles of the grande bourgeoisie....

The kingdom used to be a place of paved roads and well-filled coffers, with joy and the good life all around. But the old king went the way of all flesh years ago, and now the kingdom is derelict, a land ofwickedness and ruin. But a young prince and his sister begin to see what must be done, and-if...

Dark and shocking psychological suspense about a man at war with himself. This is a skillful and assured debut about a deeply unsettling subject. Jonathan has returned from prison to his largely deserted, run-down neighborhood. He has returned to his mother, to his dog, to filling the hot days...

As the result of a series of fortuitous encounters and circumstances, the Italian writer Giacomo Longhi falls victim to an obsessive curiosity about the famous English artist Julian Sax. He would like to meet Sax, but the great painter is surrounded by an almost impenetrable protective screen. The...

No one knows the recipe for happiness – and yet Héctor Abad has given us a whole volume. His recipes, at times bizarre, at times wise, can cure almost anything – although the ingredients are not always easy to come by. "Cauliflower in the mist" is protection against melancholy, seasoned...

The love of drinking was well-developed in the nineteenth-century Englishman. With chapters on port, claret, sherry, champagne, Burgundy, Madeira, wine cellars, glasses and butlers, Through a Glass Lightly is a love letter to wine and everything that came with it. But the passionate tale has a sorry...

A deeply engrossing, philosophical novel by a rising Estonian literary star. Wrapped into his long coat against the incessant rain and accompanied by a strange parrot, the young Dutch student Laurentius arrives in Estonia on an icy day at the end of the seventeenth century. On the run from...

Following the death of her mother, Franziska turns away from love and follows a grimly determined path to achieve a career as a concert pianist. Her determination takes her from her humble home in a small Czech town to an unconventional life in Prague, and eventually draws to a destructive climax...