Sasha, a young computer programmer from Leningrad, is driving through the forests of Northwest Russia to meet up with some friends for a nature vacation. He picks up a couple of local hitchhikers, who persuade him to come work with them at the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, or NITWiT. The adventures Sasha has in the largely dysfunctional Institute involve all sorts of magical beings and devices--a wish-granting fish, a talking cat who can remember only the beginnings of stories, a sofa that translates fairy tales into reality, a motorcycle that can zoom...

Friedrich Gorenstein's Redemption is a stark and powerful portrait of humanity caught up in Stalin's police state in the aftermath of World War II. A major work 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.

Friedrich Gorenstein's Redemption is a stark and powerful portrait of humanity caught up in Stalin's police state in the aftermath of World War II. A major work 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.