Sharp and tender at once, a humourous take on family dysfunction and human weakness seen through a young boy's eyes. Max lives with his grandparents in a residential home for refugees in Germany. When his grandmother-a terrifying, stubborn matriarch and a former Russian primadonna-moved them from the Motherland, it was in search of a better life. But she is not at all pleased with how things are run in Germany. His grandmother has been telling Max that he is an incompetent, clueless weakling since he was a child. While he may be dolt in his grandmother's eyes, Max is bright enough to notice that his stoic and taciturn grandfather has fallen hopelessly in love with their neighbour, Nina. When a child is born to Nina that is the spitting image of Max's grandfather, things come to a hilarious if dramatic head. Everybody will have to learn to defend themselves from Max's all-powerful grandmother.

Russian-born Alina Brosky, whose "Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine "was named a Best Book of the Year by "Publishers Weekly "and a Favorite Read of the Year by both "The Huffington Post "and "The Wall Street Journal, "returns with a startling new novel about the difficult work of self-acceptance.
After an encounter with a dog in which he was worsted, seventeen-year-old Marek begins attending a support group for young people with physical disabilities, which he dubs "the cripple group," led by an eccentric older man known as The Guru. Marek is dismissive of the other members of the support group, seeing little connection between their misfortunes and his own. The one exception to this is Janne, the beautiful young and wheelchair-bound woman with whom he has fallen in love. When a family cirsis forces Marek to face his demons, group or no group, he is in dire need of support. But the distance he has put between himself and The Guru's misshapen acolytes may well be too great to bridge.
An atmospheric evocation of modern Berlin, a vivid portrait of youth under pressure, and a moving story about learning to love oneself and others, "Just Call Me a Superhero "is destined to consolidate Alina Bronsky's reputation as one of Europe's most wryly entertaining and stylish authors.

Rosa Achmetowna is the outrageously nasty and wily narrator of this rollicking family saga from the author of "Broken Glass Park" When she discovers that her seventeen-year-old daughter, "stupid Sulfia," is pregnant by an unknown man she does everything to thwart the pregnancy, employing a variety of folkloric home remedies. But despite her best efforts the baby, Aminat, is born nine months later at Soviet Birthing Center Number 134. Much to Rosa's surprise and delight, dark eyed Aminat is a Tartar through and through and instantly becomes the apple of her grandmother's eye. While her good for nothing husband Kalganow spends his days feeding pigeons and contemplating death at the city park, Rosa wages an epic struggle to wrestle Aminat away from Sulfia, whom she considers a woefully inept mother. When Aminat, now a wild and willful teenager, catches the eye of a sleazy German cookbook writer researching Tartar cuisine, Rosa is quick to broker a deal that will guarantee all three women a passage out of the Soviet Union. But as soon as they are settled in the West, the uproariously dysfunctional ties that bind mother, daughter and grandmother begin to fray.
Told with sly humor and an anthropologist's eye for detail, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is the story of three unforgettable women whose destinies are tangled up in a family dynamic that is at turns hilarious and tragic. In her new novel, Russian-born Alina Bronsky gives readers a moving portrait of the devious limits of the will to survive.

"Broken Glass Park" made a remarkable debut when it was published in Germany in 2008. Its author, the twenty-nine-year old Russian-born Alina Bronksy has since been hailed as a wunderkind, an immense talent who has been the subject of constant praise and debate.
The heroine of this enigmatic, razor-sharp, and thoroughly contemporary novel is seventeen- year-old Sacha Naimann, born in Moscow. Sacha lives in Berlin now with her two younger siblings and, until recently, her mother. She is precocious, independent, skeptical and, since her stepfather murdered her mother several months ago, an orphan. Unlike most of her companions, she doesn't dream of getting out the tough housing project where they live. Her dreams are different: she wants to write a novel about her mother; and she wants to end the life of Vadim, the man who murdered her.
What strikes the reader most in this exceptional novel is Sacha's voice: candid, self-confident, mature and childlike at the same time: a voice so like the voices of many of her generation with its characteristic mix of worldliness and innocence, skepticism and enthusiasm. This is Sacha's story and it is as touching as any in recent literature.
Germany's "Freundin Magazine" called "Broken Glass Park" ?a ruthless, entertaining portrayal of life on the margins of society.? But Sacha's story does not remain on the margins; it goes straight to the heart of what it means to be seventeen in these the first years of the new century.