Alongside Kundera's "The Joke, The Axe" was one of the most influential novels to appear in Czechoslavakia during the cultural awakening of the 1960s.
In late Sixties Czechoslovakia, communist ideology is failing. A disillusioned middle-aged journalist retreats from the politics of Prague to the Moravian countryside of his youth. There he rediscovers the complex relationship with his dead father, a communist crusader. But when the journalist is accused of disgracing his father and his proletariat background, he realizes that he, too, is a leader--and that the stakes are now reversed.

-My husband was killed at the front right at the beginning of the war.- Thus opens The Ship of Widows, the story of five women brought together in a large communal apartment by the vagaries of war in the year 1943. It spotlights the female experience of World War II: the fate of those not at the front, but still forced to fight as desperately to survive starvation, cold, and exhaustion, and to maintain homes and a country to which the soldiers can return. The Ship of Widows reveals an seldom-seen period of Russia's history and an understudied segment of its population---it's...

Once known only to a small circle of admirers in Russia and the West, Andrey Platonov (1899-1951) has emerged to assume his rightful place as one of the major Russian writers of the twentieth century. Set during a small Russian town during the forcible collectivization of agriculture, The Foundation Pit portrays a group of workmen and local bureaucrats engaged in digging the foundation pit for a grand building where all the town's will live happily and "in silence."

In this classic of Russian humor and social commentary, a fired cable fitter goes on a binge and hopes a train to Petushki (where his "most beloved of trollops" awaits). On the way he bestows upon angels, fellow passengers, and the world at large a magnificent monologue on alcohol, politics, society, alcohol, philosophy, the pains of love, and, of course, alcohol.

Ivan Chonkin is a simple, bumbling peasant who has been drafted into the Red Army. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he is sent to an obscure village with one week's ration of canned meat and orders to guard a downed plane. Apparently forgotten by his unit, Chonkin resumes his life as a peasant and passes the war tending the village postmistress's garden. Just after the German invasion, the secret police discover this mysterious soldier lurking behind the front line. Their pursuit of Chonkin and his determined resistance lead to wild skirmishes and slapstick encounters.

This hilarious novel following the continuing adventures of Ivan Chonkin, a simple peasant who has been arrested as a traitor after spending World War II happily tending a garden. In this sequel to "The Extraordinary Life and Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, " Vladimir Voinovich ridicules everything sacred to the Soviet Union--the army, the justice system, the press, and Stalin himself--in a refreshing combination of dissident conscience and universal humor.