Best Selling Books by Vladimir

"Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero--sullen, gawky Hugh Person--to Switzerland . . . As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride. . . . Eight years later--following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment--Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past. . . . The several strands of dream, memory, and time [are] set off against the literary theorizing of R. and, more centrally, against the world of observable objects." --Martin Amis

"The nature of the icon cannot be grasped by means of pure art criticism, nor by the adoption of a sentimental point of view. Its forms are based on the wisdom contained in the theological and liturgical writings of the Eastern Orthodox Church and are imtimately bound up with the experience of the contemplative life. The present work is the first of its kind to give a reliable introduction to the spiritual background of this art. The introduction into the meaning and language of the icons by Ouspensky imparts to us in an admirable way the spiritual conceptions of the Eastern Orthodox Church which are often so foreign to us, but without the knowledge of which we cannot possibly understand the world of the icon." -- Back cover.

The novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men''s clothing emporium store. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle''s condescension in his aunt''s bed.

On January 13, 1953, the world learned that a vast conspiracy among Jewish doctors to murder Kremlin leaders had been unmasked. Pravda reported that several of the doctors had already confessed to the crime. Mass arrests quickly followed. Less than two months later, Stalin died, taking the secret of the “Doctor’s Plot,” as it came to be called, with him. But what was the truth behind this bizarre incident? Was it Stalin’s creation, or that of his Kremlin subordinates? How was it related to contemporary world events, including the Cold War? And did the “plot” have any actual connection with Stalin’s death? In Stalin’s Last Crime, Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov draw on an astounding array of recently declassified documents, exposing for the first time the incredible story of the Doctors’ Plot. Jonathan Brent, Editorial Director of Yale University Press and founder of its distinguished Annals of Communism series, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He lives in Connecticut. Vladimir Pavlovich Naumov, professor of history, has been Executive Secretary of the Presidential Commission for the Rehabilitation of Repressed Persons since its inception under Gorbachev. He is the author of numerous articles and books on Soviet history, and is co-editor of Stalin’s Secret Pogrom. He lives in Russia. “It is the best book ever written on the Doctors’ Plot and one of the best analyses of the Stalinist soul.” — Financial Times

Nabokov''s wise, ironic, and elegant masterpiece. • A controversial love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. • This annotated edition assiduously illuminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross-references. • Edited with a preface, introduction, and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr. "Fascinatingly detailed." -Edmund Morris, The New York Times Book Review When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert''s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. It is first and foremost a compelling narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country''s foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug''s support in order to validate the new regime.

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a perversely magical literary detective story -- subtle, intricate, leading to a tantalizing climax -- about the mysterious life of a famous writer. Many people knew things about Sebastian Knight as a distinguished novelist, but probably fewer than a dozen knew of the two love affairs that so profoundly influenced his career, the second one in such a disastrous way. After Knight''s death, his half brother sets out to penetrate the enigma of his life, starting with a few scanty clues in the novelist''s private papers. His search proves to be a story as intriguing as any of his subject''s own novels, as baffling, and, in the end, as uniquely rewarding. "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -John Updike

Here, Vladimir Unkovski-Korica re-assesses the key episodes of Tito''s rule - from the joint Stalin-Tito offensive of 1944, through to the Tito-Stalin split of 1948, the market reforms of the 1950s and the ''turn to the West'' which led to Yugoslavia''s non-alignment policy. For the first time, Unkovski-Korica also outlines Tito''s internal battle with the Workers'' Councils - empowered union bodies which emerged with the ''withering away of the party'' in the early 1950s.The Economic Struggle for Power in Tito''s Yugoslavia draws out the impact of the period economically and politically, and its long-term effects. A comprehensive history based on new archival research, this book will appeal to scholars and students of European Studies, International Relations and Politics, as well as to historians of the Balkans.

The book offers a theoretical discussion of the feudal model and a preliminary application of the model to post-Soviet Russia. In addition to a review of the feudal model as an ideal type, the author explains the analytical benefits of drawing comparisons between countries and across historical contexts. Specifically, contemporary Russia is compared to Western European countries during the Middle Ages and to the Soviet period in Russian history. The book is devoted to illuminating the most important political, social and economic characteristics of contemporary Russian society.

Alamut takes place in 11th Century Persia, in the fortress of Alamut, where self-proclaimed prophet Hasan ibn Sabbah is setting up his mad but brilliant plan to rule the region with a handful of elite fighters who are to become his "living daggers." By creating a virtual paradise at Alamut, filled with beautiful women, lush gardens, wine and hashish, Sabbah is able to convince his young fighters that they can reach paradise if they follow his commands. With parallels to Osama bin Laden, Alamut tells the story of how Sabbah was able to instill fear into the ruling class by creating a small army of devotees who were willing to kill, and be killed, in order to achieve paradise. Believing in the supreme Ismaili motto “Nothing is true, everything is permitted,” Sabbah wanted to “experiment” with how far he could manipulate religious devotion for his own political gain through appealing to what he called the stupidity and gullibility of people and their passion for pleasure and selfish desires. The novel focuses on Sabbah as he unveils his plan to his inner circle, and on two of his young followers — the beautiful slave girl Halima, who has come to Alamut to join Sabbah''s paradise on earth, and young ibn Tahir, Sabbah''s most gifted fighter. As both Halima and ibn Tahir become disillusioned with Sabbah''s vision, their lives take unexpected turns. Alamut was originally written in 1938 as an allegory to Mussolini''s fascist state. In the 1960''s it became a cult favorite throughout Tito''s Yugoslavia, and in the 1990s, during the Balkan''s War, it was read as an allegory of the region''s strife and became a bestseller in Germany, France and Spain. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the book once again took on a new life, selling more than 20,000 copies in a new Slovenian edition, and being translated around the world in more than 19 languages. This edition, translated by Michael Biggins, in the first-ever English translation.