Populated with unforgettable characters, such as Alikhanov's fellow guides Mitrofanov and Pototsky or the KGB officer Belyaev, and presented here for the first time in the English language, Pushkin Hills is arguably Dovlatov's most personal work and a poignant metaphor on the Russian attitude towards life and art.

Imbued with a comic nostalgia and overlaid with Dovlatov's characteristically dark-edged humour and wry power of observation, 'The Suitcase' is a profoundly human, delightfully ironic novel from one of the finest satirists of the 20th century.

Based on Dovlatov's actual experience of being a prison guard in Soviet Russia in the 1960s, and full of comic and humane detail, The Zone depicts the absurd day-to- day life of a camp in an insightful and unusual way, challenging commonly held perceptions of the relations between incarcerators and the incarcerated. A priceless chronicle of its time which highlights universal themes, Dovlatov's genre-defying novel also provides moments of high entertainment and humour, rendered in his characteristically sharp, concise and sardonic style.