While the Gods Were Sleeping

‘It sounds dreadful,’ I said to him one day. ‘But actually the war is the best thing that ever happened to me.’

We are very excited to announce that Erwin Mortier’s breathtaking exploration of the legacy of war – winner of AKO Literature Award – is out now, available for the first time in English.

The books follows the story of Helena who, as an old woman, turns to the past, filling notebook after notebook, trying to recapture the intensity of her life experience. She recalls the summer of 1914 when her family’s stately, bourgeois life fell to ruin. And how, amongst the devastation and chaos of the First World War, she experienced a form of liberation, with the arrival of a young British photographer who transformed her existence.

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‘like someone looking at a fallen tree who assesses the size of the canoe he can extract from it’

“My brother Juan was murdered in Urabá. Despite the immense pain it caused me, I immediately realised that something had happened which had the dimensions of a tragedy – I mean the aesthetic dimensions. Part of me felt a pain which was at times unbearable, while the other part was coldly considering the facts, like someone looking at a fallen tree who assesses the size of the canoe he can extract from it.

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Subtly Worded – Out On June 19th

‘More than any other Russian writer of the last century, she deserves to be considered a worthy successor to Chekhov’ Robert Chandler

‘Teffi’: just one name – like Dante, Rembrandt; or, more topically, Neymar… – but a writer whose stories range so widely in content, style and tone that it is a wonder they were all written by just one woman. (more…)

Summer Reads from Pushkin Press

This summer, we’ve chosen three of our beautiful paperbacks to transport you to other places and other times: Red Love, Bonita Avenue and Butterflies in November. This eclectic selection is guaranteed to keep you enthralled, whether you’re lounging on the beach or stuck on the Tube.

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