Arkady Strugatsky – författare

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?

The Strugatsky brothers'' poignant and introspective novel of first contact that inspired the classic film Stalker

It is a mysterious city whose sun is switched on in the morning and switched off at night, bordered by an abyss on one side and an impossibly high wall on the other. Its inhabitants are people who were plucked from twentieth-century history at various times and places and left to govern themselves, advised by Mentors whose purpose seems inscrutable. This is life in the Experiment.Andrei Voronin, a young astronomer plucked from Leningrad in the 1950s, is a die-hard believer in the Experiment, even though his first job in the city is as a garbage collector. As increasingly nightmarish scenarios begin to affect the city, he rises through the political hierarchy, with devastating effect.

ENTER THE ADMINISTRATIONPeretz spends his days navigating the bureaucracy of the Administration, the institute tasked with governing the Forest below. Except no one ever seems to go there, and his attempts only trap him further within the workings of this strange organisation.ENTER THE FORESTCandide cannot remember how he got to the Forest, and he is certain he belongs somewhere else. Determined to escape, he finds that all paths lead him round strange bends and into encounters with bizarre creatures.NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMSThis classic SF novel sees Boris and Arkady Strugatsky meditate on how little man can understand of the wider world, and in doing so produce one of the great literary works to come out of Soviet Russia.

When Maxim Kammerer, a young space explorer from twenty-second-century Earth, crash-lands on an uncharted world, he thinks of himself as a latter-day Robinson Crusoe. Eager to establish first contact with the planet''s humanlike inhabitants, he finds himself increasingly entangled in their primitive way of life. After his experiences in their nightmarish military, criminal justice, and mental health systems, Maxim begins to realize that his sojourn on this radioactive and war-scarred world will not be a walk in the park.The Inhabited Island is one of the Strugatsky brothers'' most popular and acclaimed novels, yet the only previous English-language edition (Prisoners of Power) was based on a version heavily censored by Soviet authorities. Now, in a sparkling new edition by award-winning translator Andrew Bromfield, this landmark novel can be newly appreciated by both longtime Strugatsky fans and new explorers of the Russian science fiction masters'' astonishingly rich body of work.

From the Russian masters of science fiction comes The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn, a hilarious spoof on the classic country-house murder mystery.

When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at a remote ski chalet on vacation, the last thing he intends to do is get involved in any police work. He’s there to ski, drink brandy, and loaf around in blissful solitude.

But he hadn’t counted on the other vacationers, an eccentric bunch, including a famous hypnotist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, a sulky teenager of indeterminate gender, and the mysterious Mr. and Mrs. Moses. And as the chalet fills up, strange things start happening—things that seem to indicate the presence of another, unseen guest. Is there a ghost on the premises? A prankster? Something more sinister?

When an avalanche blocks the mountain pass and traps everyone in the chalet, the corpse is finally discovered. Glebsky’s vacation is over, and he’s embarked on the most unusual investigation he’s ever been involved with. In fact, the further he looks into it, the more Glebsky realizes that the victim may not even be human.

In this late novel from the legendary Russian sci-fi duo—here in its first-ever English translation—the Strugatskys gleefully upend the plot of many an Hercule Poirot mystery—and the result is much funnier and much stranger than anything Agatha Christie ever wrote.