The story begins on the eve of 9/11, with the narrator's haunting description of the airplane attack on the Twin Towers as seen on TV while he is on holiday in Central Asia. Subsequent chapters shift backwards and forwards in time, but two main themes emerge: the rise of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan under the charismatic but reclusive leadership of Tahir Yuldash and Juma Namangani; and the main character, poet Belgi's movement from the outer edge of the circle, from the mountains of Osh, into the inner sanctum of al-Qaeda, and ultimately to a meeting with Sheikh bin Laden himself. His journey begins with a search for a Sufi spiritual master and ends in guerrilla warfare, and it is this tension between a transcendental and a violent response to oppression, between the book and the bomb, that gives the novel its specific poignancy. Along the way, Ismailov provides wonderfully vivid accounts of historical events (as witnessed by Belgi) such as the siege of Kunduz, the breakout from Shebergan prison - a kind of Afghan Guantanamo - and the insurgency in the Ferghana Valley.

When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious business. And where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?

Damilola Karpov is a pilot. Living in Byzantium, a huge sky city floating above the land of Urkaine, he makes his living as a drone pilot - capable of being a cameraman who records the events unfolding in Urkaine or, with the weapons aboard his drone, of making a newsworthy event happen for his employers: 'Big Byz Media'. His recordings are known as S.N.U.F.F.: Special Newsreel/Universal Feature Film. S.N.U.F.F. is a superb post-apocalyptic novel, exploring the conflict between the nation of Urkaine, its causes and its relationship with the city 'Big Byz' above. Contrasting poverty and luxury, low and high technology, barbarity and civilisation - while asking questions about the nature of war, the media, entertainment and humanity.

Eliza Altairsky-Lointaine is the toast of Moscow society, a beautiful actress in an infamous theatre troupe. The estranged wife of a descendant of Genghis Khan, her love life is as colourful as the parts she plays: her ex-husband has threatened to kill anyone who courts her. He appears to be making good on his promise. Fandorin is contacted by concerned friend - the widowed wife of Chekhov - who asks him to investigate an alarming incident involving Eliza. But when he watches Eliza on stage for the first time, he falls desperately in love . . . Can he solve the case - and win over Eliza - without attracting the attentions of the murderer he is trying to find?

These passionate, haunting, mysterious stories made a remarkable impact when they were published in Moscow. Known only through a handful of stories published in literary journals, Dmitry Bakin suddenly found himself hailed as one of the most striking and original young writers to emerge since perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union. As if Kafka or Gabriel Garcia Marquez were writing from the heartlands - or badlands - of the Russian provinces, Bakin's tales are gripping, elemental dramas of restlessness and anguish. Nothing is stable in Bakin's fictional universe, least of all reality, and everyone is searching, whether for safety, certainty, freedom or revenge. Survivors, obsessives, eccentrics, mystics, they are all prepared - or condemned - to sacrifice everything if they have to. Unsettling, extraordinarily imaginative and ambitious, this collection offers compelling evidence of a unique and burgeoning literary talent.

Fandorin returns in a swashbuckling tale of abduction and intrigue, set during the build-up to the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II. Grand Duke Georgii Alexandrovich arrives in Moscow for the coronation, with three of his children. During an afternoon stroll, daughter Xenia is dragged away by bandits, only to be rescued by an elegant gentleman and his oriental sidekick. The passing heroes introduce themselves as Fandorin and Masa, but panic ensues when they realise that four-year old Mikhail has been snatched in the confusion. A ransom letter arrives from an international criminal demanding the handover of the Count Orlov, an enormous diamond on the royal sceptre which is due to play a part in the coronation. Can the gentleman detective find Mikhail in time?

Haunting stories from the Soviet-Afghan War from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature - A new translation of Zinky Boys based on the revised text - From 1979 to 1989 Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed thousands of casualties on both sides. While the Soviet Union talked about a 'peace-keeping' mission, the dead were shipped back in sealed zinc coffins. Boys in Zinc presents the honest testimonies of soldiers, doctors and nurses, mothers, wives and siblings who describe the lasting effects of war. Weaving together their stories, Svetlana Alexievich shows us the truth of the Soviet-Afghan conflict: the killing and the beauty of small everyday moments, the shame of returned veterans, the worries of all those left behind. When it was first published in the USSR in 1991, Boys in Zinc sparked huge controversy for its unflinching, harrowing insight into the realities of war.

From 1979 to 1989, a million Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed 50,000 casualties-and the youth and humanity of many tens of thousands more. In this new translation, Zinky Boys weaves together the candid and affecting testimony of the officers and grunts, doctors and nurses, mothers, sons, and daughters who describe the war and its lasting effects. What emerges is a "masterpiece of reportage" (Timothy Snyder, New York Review of Books) that offers a unique, harrowing, and unforgettably powerful insight into the realities of war. In their Nobel citation, the Swedish Academy called "her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." "Alexievich serves no ideology, only an ideal: to listen closely enough to the ordinary voices of her time to orchestrate them into extraordinary books." -Philip Gourevitch, New Yorker

CRIMEA, 1914 When the Tzar's head of security is assassinated, Erast Fandorin is called to investigate: the killer has been overheard mentioning a 'black city' so Fandorin and his trusty companion, Masa, head to Baku, the burgeoning Russian capital of oil. But from the moment they arrive in the city - a hotbed of corruption and greed by the Caspian Sea - they realise someone is watching their every move, and they will stop at nothing to derail their investigation. Having suffered a brutal attack and with Masa's life hanging by a thread, Fandorin is forced to rely on the help of an unexpected new ally, and he begins to suspect the plot might be part of something larger - and much more sinister. With war brewing in the Balkans and Europe's empires struggling to contain the threat of revolution, Fandorin must try and solve his most difficult case yet - before time runs out.

Dashing hero Erast Fandorin returns for another intriguing Russian crime caper, from the bestselling author of THE WINTER QUEEN. General Khrapov, newly appointed Governor-General of Siberia and soon-to-be Minister of the Interior, is murdered in his official saloon carriage on his way from St Petersburg to Moscow. The killer, disguised as Fandorin, leaves a knife thrust up to the hilt in his victim's chest and escapes through the window of the carriage. Can Fandorin escape suspicion? A battle of wills and ideals, revolutionaries and traditionalists and good versus evil.

Boris Akunin's well-loved, inimitable hero faces two very different adversaries: one, a deft, comedic swindler and master of disguise, whose machinations send ripples spreading through the carefully maintained calm of Moscow in 1886. The other is a brutal serial killer, driven by an insane, maniacal obsession, who strikes terror into the heart of the Moscow slums in 1889 - and who may have more in common with London's own Jack the Ripper than simply a taste for women of easy virtue.

Fate sends two star-crossed lovers, Sasha and Volodenka, on two separate journeys across space and time. Sasha finds herself as a young woman in a time not far from the present day. Volodenka finds himself as a young soldier in a horrific conflict at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet, despite their cosmic schism, their letters still reach one another; as he helps her to come to terms with life and she helps him to come to terms with death. Half male, half female; half exploration of the physical and the immediate, half meditation on the intangible and the infinite, The Light and the Dark is a literary feat as balanced and beautiful as it is prodigious and profound.

Can Fandorin infiltrate a secret society to save Moscow's youth? A dark and decadent detective story from the master of Russian crime fiction. There's been rising concern in Moscow over a wave of suicides among the city's young bohemians. An intrepid newspaper reporter, Zhemailo, begins to uncover the truth behind the phenomenon - that the victims are linked by a secret society, the Lovers of Death. But Zhemailo is not the only investigator hot on the heels of these disciples of the occult. Little do they realise that the latest 'convert' to their secret society, assuming the alias of a Japanese prince, is none other than Erast Fandorin. But when a young and naive provincial woman, Masha Mironova, becomes embroiled in the society, and Zhemalio dies a mysterious death, Fandorin must do more than merely infiltrate and observe. Especially when the spin of the Russian roulette wheel decrees that our dashing hero be the next to die by his own hand. Can Fandorin fake his own demise, all while outwitting the cult's dastardly leader?

It is New Year's Eve 1945 in a small Soviet town not long liberated from German occupation. Sashenka, a headstrong and self-centered teenage girl, resents her mother for taking a lover after her father's death in the war, and denounces her to the authorities for the petty theft that keeps them from going hungry. When she meets a Jewish lieutenant who has returned to bury his family, betrayed and murdered by their neighbors during the occupation, both must come to terms with the trauma that surrounds them as their relationship deepens. Redemption is a stark and powerful portrait of humanity caught up in Stalin's police state in the aftermath of the war and the Holocaust. In this short novel, written in 1967 but unpublished for many years, Friedrich Gorenstein effortlessly combines the concrete details of daily life in this devastated society with witness testimonies to the mass murder of Jews. He gives a realistic account of postwar Soviet suffering through nuanced psychological portraits of people confronted with harsh choices and a coming-of-age story underscored by the deep involvement of sexuality and violence. Interspersed are flights of philosophical consideration of the relationship between Christians and Jews, love and suffering, justice and forgiveness. A major addition to the canon of literature bearing witness to the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, Redemption is an important reckoning with anti-Semitism and Stalinist repression from a significant Soviet Jewish voice.

The short stories of Victor Pelevin are as individual, reality-warping and endlessly inventive as his novels, moving effortlessly between different genres and moods, bursting with absurd wit and existential satire. In The Blue Lantern he brings together sex-change prostitutes, melancholy animals and a cabinful of young boys obsessed by death. Sidestepping the world we take for granted, these stories show in miniature the fantastical talent for which the Observer acclaimed Pelevin's work as 'the real thing, fiction of world class'.

A Dog's Heart: An Appalling Story is Mikhail Bulgakov's hilarious satire on Communist hypocrisies. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Andrew Bromfield, and includes an introduction by James Meek. In this surreal work by the author of The Master and Margarita, wealthy Moscow surgeon Filip Preobrazhensky implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a drunken petty criminal into the body of a stray dog named Sharik. As the dog slowly transforms into a man, and the man into a slovenly, lecherous government official, the doctor's life descends into chaos. A scathing indictment of the New Soviet Man, A Dog's Heart was immediately banned by the Soviet government when it was first published in 1925: alternating lucid realism with pulse-raising drama, the novel captures perfectly the atmosphere of its rapidly changing times. Andrew Bromfield's vibrant translation is accompanied by an introduction by James Meek, which places the work in the context of the Russian class struggles of the era and considers the vision, progressive style and lasting relevance of an author who was isolated and suppressed during his lifetime. This edition also contains notes and a chronology. Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was born in Kiev, today the capital of Ukraine. After finishing high school, Bulgakov entered the Medical School of Kiev University, graduating in 1916. He wrote about his experiences as a doctor in his early works Notes on Cuffs and Notes of a Young Country Doctor. His later works treated the subject of the artist and the tyrant under the guise of historical characters, but The Master and Margarita is generally considered his masterpiece. Fame, at home and abroad, was not to come until a quarter of a century after his death at Moscow in 1940. If you enjoyed A Dog's Heart, you might like Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, also available in Penguin Classics. 'One of the greatest of modern Russian writers, perhaps the greatest' Nigel Jones, Independent

The Matiushin Case is one of the darkest and most powerful works of fiction to appear in Russian in the last twenty years. Deriving, like Captain of the Steppe (And Other Stories, 2013), from the author's own traumatic experience as a conscript in the last years of the Soviet Union, it follows the experience of Matiushin, a young, sensitive, disoriented man, damaged first by violence in his family then by the brutality of army life in Central Asia. Indebted to the different traditions of 'labour camp prose' pioneered by Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, the novel is, however, much more than an expose of societal ills, shocking enough though these are. Its literary achievement lies elsewhere: in the way that the horrific realities of conscript life are steeped in the unique mood of dreaminess and timelessness created by the setting and by Pavlov's prose-style and in the unique type of tension that this mood creates. Matiushin's 'crime and punishment' emerge from this tension with compelling inevitability; the victim turns killer. The hell that Oleg Pavlov describes is physical and societal, but above all psychological, and, as such, no less universal than that described by Dante or Dostoevsky.

Closing the gap between the contemporary Russian novel and the masterpieces of the early Soviet avant-garde, this masterful mixture of prose and poetry, excerpts from private letters and diaries, and quotes from newspapers and NKVD documents, is a unique amalgam of documentary, philosophical novel, and black humor.