Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot is an immaculate portrait of innocence tainted by the brutal reality of human greed. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Russian by David McDuff, with an introduction by William Mills Todd III. Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naive epileptic Prince Myshkin - the titular 'idiot' - pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General, his wife, and his three daughters. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated with her, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder. Inspired by an image of Christ's suffering Dostoyevsky sought to portray in Prince Myshkin the purity of a 'truly beautiful soul' and explore the perils that innocence and goodness face in a corrupt world. David McDuff's new translation brilliantly captures the novel's idiosyncratic and dream-like language and the nervous, elliptic flow of the narrative. This edition also contains a new introduction by William Mills Todd III, which is a fascinating examination of the pressures on Dostoyevsky as he wrote the story of his Christ-like hero. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow. From 1849-54 he lived in a convict prison, and in later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His other works available in Penguin Classics include Crime & Punishment, The Idiot and Demons. If you enjoyed The Idiot, you might like Anton Chekhov's Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics. 'McDuff's language is rich and alive' The New York Times Book Review '[The Idiot's] ... narrative is so compelling' Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Now in paperback, a beautifully illustrated account of of Tove Jansson's life and art The definitive biography of one of the most unique and beloved children's authors of the 20th century, the creator of the Moomins. Tove Jansson (1914-2001) led a long, colourful and productive life, impacting significantly the political, social and cultural history of 20th-century Finland. And while millions of children have grown up with Little My, Snufkin, Moomintroll and the many creatures of Moominvalley, the life of Jansson - daughter, friend and companion - is more touching still. This book weaves together the myriad qualities of a painter, author, illustrator, scriptwriter and lyricist from fraught beginnings through fame, war and heartbreak and ultimately to a peaceful end. Dr Tuula Karjalainen is a Finnish art historian and non-fiction writer who has previously worked as a director of the Helsinki Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki. As the author of Tove Jansson's biography, Karjalainen has become an expert not only on Jansson's writing and art but also on her decades of personal correspondence and journals.

Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark's leading poets. She has published over 20 books in Danish since her first collection appeared in 1981, and her work has been translated into many languages. She received the 1999 Nordic Council Literature Prize - Scandinavia's most prestigious literary award - for Queen's Gate, which was published in David McDuff's English translation by Bloodaxe in 2001. Also in 2001, she was appointed a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog, and in 2006 she received the Nordic Prize from the Swedish Academy. The Taste of Steel and The Smell of Snow are the first two collections in Pia Tafdrup's new series of books focussing on the human senses. While taste and smell dominate, the poems are equally about the way of the world and the losses that people sustain during the course of their lives - the disappearance of friends and family members, but also the erosion of control of one's own existence. The themes of ecology, war and conflict are never far away, and there is a constant recognition of the circular nature of life, the interplay of the generations. Pia Tafdrup's previous series of themed collections was The Salamander Quartet (2002-2012). Written over ten years, its first two parts were The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses, translated by David McDuff and published by Bloodaxe in 2010 as Tarkovsky's Horses and other poems. This was followed in 2015 by Salamander Sun and other poems, McDuff's translation of The Migrant Bird's Compass and Salamander Sun, the third and fourth parts of the quartet.

A thrilling study of guilt and power, the Penguin Classics edition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is translated with an introduction and notes by David McDuff. Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Porfiry, a suspicious detective, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murderer, Dostoyevsky's dark masterpiece evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur and everyone's faith in humanity is tested.

Tua Forsstroem is a visionary Finland-Swedish poet who has become Finland's most celebrated contemporary poet. Her poetry draws its sonorous and plangent music from the landscapes of Finland, seeking harmony between the troubled human heart and the threatened natural world. I walked on into the forest is her twelfth book of poetry, her first since One Evening in October I Rowed Out on the Lake (2012/2015), the collection which followed her celebrated trilogy, I studied once at a wonderful faculty (2003), published in English translation by Bloodaxe in 2006. In some sense a continuation of the previous collection, her new book focuses more acutely on the themes of death and grief, and in particular the devastating loss of her beloved granddaughter. It shows her poetry's tone of inner discourse shifting imperceptibly towards a new and harsh gravity. As Sweden's August Prize jury commented on her work as a whole, this is poetry 'both melancholy and impassioned', expressing a 'struggle against meaninglessness, disintegration, destruction - against death in life'.

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality, colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with Porfiry, a suspicious detective, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murderer, Dostoyevsky's dark masterpiece evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur and everyone's faith in humanity is tested.

During the Stalin years Russia had four great poets to voice the feelings of her oppressed people: Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetayeva. The first two survived the terror, but Mandelstam died in a camp and Tsvetayeva was driven to hang herself in 1941. This comprehensive selection of Tsvetayeva's poetry includes complete versions of all her major long poems and poem cycles: Poem of the End, An Attempt at a Room, Poems to Czechia and New Year Letter. It was the first English translation to use the new, definitive Russica text of her work. It also includes additional versions ascribed to F.F. Morton which first appeared in The New Yorker: these rhyming translations are actually the work of Joseph Brodsky (who lived at 44 Morton Street in New York).

Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark's leading poets. She has received the Nordic Literature Prize - Scandinavia's most prestigious literary award - and the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize. This new translation of her work combines two recent collections, The Migrant Bird's Compass and Salamander Sun, which comprise the third and fourth parts of a quartet written over ten years: the first two parts are The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses (published in English by Bloodaxe in 2010 as Tarkovsky's Horses and other poems). The Migrant Bird's Compass is a book of poems about the dimensions of travel, either to specific countries or as an inner journey. The route from birth to death is also portrayed. Travel demands commitment and curiosity. The only predictable thing about it is the unpredictable. Travel implies vulnerability, but also much that has happened at home while one was away. The poems are about the experience of 'resting in myself / despite the fire in the centre of the earth'. Salamander Sun presents 60 poems, one for each year, from 1952, when Pia Tafdrup was born, to 2011; from the first chaotic sensations, through the gradual discovery of the world and its diversity, and of language, its possibilities and challenges; from growing up on a farm, puberty, study, politics, love, to becoming a poet, having two sons, getting older and having old parents; to leaving one's mark and understanding one's place in the passage of time. The poems cast light backwards, but also seek a focus in the future. Together with The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses the two books form a quartet that centres on the theme of journeying and passage, its individual parts creating a field of tension. Each part portrays an element: water, earth, air and fire, each represented by a creature, and each part has a key figure: the beloved person, the father, the mother and the "I" that recalls its life. The quartet is an attempt to find structure in the midst of chaos.

Tua Forsstrom is a visionary Finland-Swedish poet who has become Finland's most celebrated contemporary poet. Her poetry draws its sonorous and plangent music from the landscapes of Finland, seeking harmony between the troubled human heart and the threatened natural world. One Evening in October I Rowed Out on the Lake is her first new collection since her celebrated trilogy, I studied once at a wonderful faculty, published by Bloodaxe in 2006. As Sweden's August Prize jury commented, this is poetry 'both melancholy and impassioned', expressing a 'struggle against meaninglessness, disintegration, destruction - against death in life'.

A pioneering work of dystopian fiction from one of Sweden's most acclaimed writers Written midway between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Kallocain depicts a totalitarian 'World State' which seeks to crush the individual entirely. In this desolate, paranoid landscape of 'police eyes' and 'police ears', the obedient citizen and middle-ranking scientist Leo Kall discovers a drug that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. But can private thought really be obliterated? Karin Boye's chilling novel of creeping alienation shows the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance, no matter how futile. Translated with an introduction by David McDuff

Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark's leading poets, the winner of the Nordic Prize - Scandinavia's most prestigious literary award - for her collection Queen's Gate, published in English by Bloodaxe in 2001. This new translation of her work combines two more recent collections, The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses, which comprise the first and second parts of a quartet written over ten years: the third and fourth parts are The Migrant Bird's Compass and Salamander Sun (published in English by Bloodaxe in 2015 as Salamander Sun and other poems). The poems of The Whales in Paris span the moment of conception to eternity. Life is seen as a confrontation with what is bigger than oneself: love, desire and death, primordial forces that are present even in our very modern civilisation. Those great forces of existence form the territory of The Whales in Paris: above all, desire and death, illuminated with motifs from childhood, the relation to parents, family, mythical figures from the Bible. Time, dreams and meditation also play their part. Pia Tafdrup writes: 'Tarkovsky's Horses is about loss in a double sense. The themes of the poems are my father's increasing forgetfulness, his loss of his faculties and then my loss of a father. The book is a poetic portrayal of the course of an illness for which science has few words - my father begins to suffer from dementia, and then he has to go into a nursing home, where he dies. Disintegration of identity and its inexorable progress are followed through every phase, in a concrete and naked form that makes use of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The poems about a father who forgets more and more are set in a border landscape which is also not without its comical aspects. The poems narrate the drama of what it is to be a human being.'

‘Oh, if you were the kind of man I am … I loved the shame of depravity.  I loved cruelty … In a word – a Karamazov!’

The murder of brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov changes the lives of his sons irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan, the intellectual, whose mental tortures drive him to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family’s rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother Smerdyakov. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murderer, Dostoyevsky’s dark masterwork evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil blur, and everyone’s faith in humanity is tested. 

This powerful translation of The Brothers Karamazov features an introduction highlighting Dostoyevsky’s recurrent themes of guilt and salvation, with a new chronology and further reading.

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, The Cossacks describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilization after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy's own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, is a compelling consideration of the nature of war, while Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, returns to the Caucasus of Tolstoy's youth to explore the life of a great leader torn apart by a conflict of loyalties. Written at the end of the nineteenth century, it is amongst the last and greatest of Tolstoy's shorter works.

From a hugely popular, award-winning Finnish author, " "this entertaining, profound, and satirical tale follows a Romanian beggar living on the streets of Helsinki.
Vatanescu, a young Romanian construction worker, desires two things: a future for himself and a pair of football boots for his son. So off he goes to a cold, dark country to beg.
Despite reading about Finland in the novels of Arto Paasilinna, Vatanescu has no idea what he is in for, and soon he is living on the streets of Helsinki, throwing feasts from the contents of a dumpster with his fellow beggars. Little does he realize, however, that his employer is about to ruin his bacchanal, and much, much more...
As Vatanescu flees from international crime organizations as well as the Finnish police, he finds an unlikely companion: a hare who has been sentenced to death for living within Helsinki's city limits. Together, Vatanescu and his new fellow fugitive set on a journey from Lapland to the National Idea Park construction site, to the upper echelons of Finnish politics.
Known for his satirical humor and picaresque style, Tuomas Kyro offers an unusual tale in the vein of Jonas Jonasson's "The Hundred-Year-Old Man "and Rachel Joyce's "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry." At once humorous and deeply moving, "The Beggar and the Hare "is a modern tour de force.

The four years Dostoyevsky spent in a Siberian prison inform this portrait of convicts, their diverse stories, and prison life, rendered in almost documentary detail.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories is a collection of stories that emerged from a profound spiritual crisis, during which Leo Tolstoy believed that he had encountered death itself. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Anthony Briggs, David McDuff and Ronald Wilks. These seven compelling stories explore, in very different ways, Tolstoy's preoccupation with mortality. 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' is a devastating account of a man fighting his inevitable end, and asks the existential question: why must a good person be taken before his time? In 'Polikushka', a light-fingered drunk's chance to prove himself has tragic repercussions, while 'Three Deaths' depicts the last moments of an aristocrat, a peasant and a tree, and 'The Forged Coupon' shows a seemingly minor offence that leads inexorably to ever more horrific crimes. And in three tales about soldiers, 'After the Ball', 'The Wood-felling' and 'The Raid', Tolstoy portrays the brutality that all too often accompanies military life. The translations by Anthony Briggs, David McDuff and Ronald Wilks capture Tolstoy's powerful, vivid prose. This edition also includes a new introduction by Anthony Briggs discussing Tolstoy's breakdown and the effect this had on his writing, as well as a chronology, further reading and notes. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born at Yasnaya Polyana, in central Russia. He led a life of wasteful idleness until 1851, when he travelled to the Caucasus and joined the army with his older brother, fighting in the Crimean war. After marrying Sofya Behrs in 1862, Tolstoy settled down, managing his estates and writing two of his best-known novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878). In 1884 Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis, becoming an extreme moralist, rejecting the state, the church and private property. His last novel, Resurrection (1900), was written to raise money for the Doukhobor sect of Christian spiritualists. If you enjoyed The Death of Ivan Ilyich, you might like Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, also available in Penguin Classics.

A pioneering work of dystopian fiction from one of Sweden's most acclaimed writers Written midway between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Kallocain depicts a totalitarian 'World State' which seeks to crush the individual entirely. In this desolate, paranoid landscape of 'police eyes' and 'police ears', the obedient citizen and middle-ranking scientist Leo Kall discovers a drug that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. But can private thought really be obliterated? Karin Boye's chilling novel of creeping alienation shows the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance, no matter how futile. Translated with an introduction by David McDuff

Our ambitious program of new Tolstoy editions continues with two collections of powerful stories

The violent spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life that inspired his last period of creativity produced the stories in this compelling and startling collection. They portray the multifaceted nature of desire, from idealistic romance to sexual jealousy, from desperate lust to relentless longing. ?The K reutzer Sonata? caused a public sensation with its indictment of so-called Christian marriage, a theme echoed in ?Family Happiness.? In ?The Devil, ? a young man finds it impossible to resist a beautiful peasant woman with whom he had an affair before his marriage. And ?Father Sergius? shows a man going to increasingly desperate ends in order to avoid the temptations of the flesh.

Dostoyevsky’s first great literary triumph, the novella Poor Folk is presented here, along with “The Landlady,” “Mr. Prokharchin,” and “Polzunkov.”

A man murders a grocer over fifteen cents-but in the sharp, icy prose and detached tone that defines this collection, his crime seems neither sensational nor entirely reprehensible. Rosa Liksom populates a world of snow-covered landscapes, antiseptic apartments, fish factories, and lumber camps with the obsessive, the violent, and the unhinged. A woman refuses to leave prison until she has served her entire sentence. A man obsessively cleans his apartment as his life moves on around him. A woman kills her new husband over his neediness and inability to leave their bed. The stark lives and actions of these characters are infused with an emotional intimacy that draws the reader into uncomfortable empathy with the extremity of their deeds.

From the early Soviet period, the impassioned short fiction of the great Russian-Jewish writer
One of the most powerful short-story writers of the twentieth century, Isaac Babel expressed his sense of inner conflict through disturbing tales that explored the contradictions of Russian society. Whether reflecting on anti-Semitism in stories such as ?Story of My Dovecote? and ?First Love, ? or depicting Jewish gangsters in his native Odessa, Babel's eye for the comical laid bare the ironies of history. His masterpiece, ?Red Cavalry, ? set in the Soviet-Polish war, is one of the classics of modern fiction. By turns flamboyant and restrained, this collection of Babel's best-known stories vividly expresses the horrors of his age.
?Amazing not only as literature but as biography.? ?Richard Bernstein, "The New York Times"
?Marvelously subtle, tragic, and often comic.? ?James Wood, "The New Republic"