Open Borders Press – serie

In November 1944, in the worst winter ever known in Bologna, in the depths of the war, the bomb-scarred streets are home to starving refugees who have fled the advancing Allies. The city is divided between the Fascist Black Brigades, the officers of the S.S. and the partisans of the Italian Resistance. Comandante De Luca finds himself in trouble when three murders land on his desk: a professor shot through the eye, an engineer beaten to death, and a German corporal left to be gnawed on by rats in a flooded cellar. De Luca must untangle all three cases in a hurry with ten lives on the line: ten Italian hostages who will face a Nazi firing squad if the corporal's killing is not solved to the German command's satisfaction.

In this third volume of Andrey Kurkov's war diaries, Ukraine's greatest living writer chronicles the third year of the full-scale Russian invasion from his home in Kyiv and from journeys all over the country - capturing moments of horror, resilience, absurdity and grace with an unmatched clarity. Children on a contested border wear hooded bulletproof vests to school; soldiers write haiku; professional clowns go to war; and the mother of a young soldier killed in battle uses his compensation money to create a rehabilitation centre for veterans. Roses bloom across Ukraine in quiet tribute to a florist and soldier killed in Avdiivka, remembered by those who once bought his flowers. In Pokrovsk, 7,500 residents refuse to leave a city that no longer exists - their homes obliterated but their will unbroken. And buried beneath a cherry tree, a murdered writer's final diary is recovered, a haunting echo of a silenced voice. From the home front to the trenches, Kurkov captures the rhythms of survival - the quiet rituals, joys, unexpected humour and appalling losses - in a very moving record of national endurance. Three Years on Fire is a luminous act of remembrance from a writer whose voice stands witness to everything Ukraine has lost - and everything it refuses to give up.

No-one wants to die young, but nobodywants to get old. Elke Heidenreich, having reached a certain age, has made ither mission to debunk some of our persistent myths about ageing in this wise, wittyand life-affirming book. More than a self-help text, it is a series ofreflections on the author’s life and experience as a writer, literary critic,journalist and television presenter: measured and compassionate, and drawing onthe work of philosophers, historians and authors.