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The 2013 Winners are In!



Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Russia & Eastern Europe

• Russia
• Ukraine
• Baltic States
• Caucasus
• Central Asian Republics

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  Moscow: A Literary & Cultural History by Caroline Brooke

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  This fantastic series offers rich cultural and historical accounts of the world's great cities. Here the able Brooke explores the way in which Moscow has reinvented itself across history, and the fascination it has exerted over the writers, artists and composers who have made the city their home.

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  Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  A hugely impressive and highly acclaimed study of the relentless rise of Communism, Archie Brown's groundbreaking work is both scholarly and anecdotal.

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  Let Our Fame Be Great by Oliver Bullough

  Price: £25.00    Add to Basket

  An exquisitely lyrical and deeply moving account of Bullough's travels across the Caucasus hearing stories from the people who managed to resist the invading Russians longer than any other army. A true celebration of spirit and bravery.

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  Let Our Fame Be Great by Oliver Bullough

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A gripping and impassioned portrait of the under-represented peoples of the Caucasus region. Bullough travels through remote villages and refugee camps, fusing history and reportage into a critical understanding of the area’s history.

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  A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck with Robert Capa

  Price: £14.99    Add to Basket

  These two legends of word and image travelled across Russia together as the Iron Curtain fell. In typically unflinching prose Steinbeck tells of their experience, his observations complemented finely by Capa's shots. First published in 1948, this is a wonderful book.

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  A Journey Through Afghanistan by David Chaffetz

  Price: £12.00    Add to Basket

  Along with a fellow student, David Chaffetz travelled through peacetime Afghanistan on horseback, here he recounts his journey and the stories and hopes of the Afghan people.

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  Sakhalin Island by Anton Chekhov

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  First published in 1895, this is the fascinating account of Chekhov's arduous journey across Russia to the penal colony of Sakhalin Island. During a three-month stay he met hundreds of inmates and witnessed scenes that disturbed him deeply. In characteristically measured and evocative prose Chekhov tells of his experiences. Both a masterpiece of social science and a fine insight into one of the world's great writers.

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  Anton Chekhov by Mikhail Chekhov

  Price: £17.99    Add to Basket

  An intimate memoir of this playwright and master of the short story by his brother Mikhail, translated into English here for the first time since its publication in 1933.

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  Ghost Wars by Steve Coll

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A squirmingly revealing account of the CIA's involvement with Al-Qaeada. A combination of meticulous research through previously classified files and interviews with top-ranking officials, Pulitzer prize winner Coll explains how the American government funded and trained an Islamic jihad in attempt to arrest Soviet expansion.

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  Cables from Kabul by Sherard Cowper-Coles

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  As British ambassador from 2007-2010 the author recounts the costs of military and diplomatic engagement in the war. A frank, compelling critique of government policy, interspersed with vivid portraits of Afghanistan and its people.

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  Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  This is the remarkable true story of a Texas congressman called Charlie Wilson who became passionate about freeing the Afghan people from Russian occupation and rallied the American population behind him, actions which were to have a profound effect on the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the rise of militant Islam.

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  An Unexpected Light by Jason Elliot

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Jason Elliot recounts his journey across Afghanistan, time spent among the mujaheddin during Soviet occupation and ten years on as the Taliban advanced on Kabul. Illustrated by his astonishing black and white photographs, this serious travel book is weighty, informative and vividly insightful.

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  Crimea by Orlando Figes

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  Figes is back on form with this long-overdue history of the Crimean War. Accompanied by some remarkable photographs, he has pieced together an engaging account of a war which killed over 800,000 people and was the epitome of the Victorian quest for colonisation and religious and moral superiority.

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  Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes

  Price: £14.99    Add to Basket

  Figes's masterpiece evokes in breathtaking detail the lives of those who have shaped their nation. No Russian history is richer.

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  Forever War by Dexter Filkins

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  Award-winning New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins provides a visceral understanding of the wars in Afghanistan and Iran. An astonishing piece of unflinching and compassionate journalism which seeks to portray the human experience of war.

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  The House by the Dvina by Eugenie Fraser

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  The riveting and enchanting story of Eugenie Fraser's childhood in the Russian countryside. Born in 1906 to a Russian father and a Scottish mother, Fraser recounts the remarkable lives of her grandparents and great-grandparents and her own upbringing set against extraordinary historic events.

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  Two Babushkas by Masha Gessen

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  Gessen describes the lives of her two Jewish grandmothers living out difficult lives between Hitler and Stalin. An informing and engaging personal history.

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  The Sleeping Buddha by Hamida Ghafour

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Sent to report on Afghanistan's post-9/11 reconstruction awakens memories for Hamida Ghafour of her own childhood in Kabul, and prompts her to retell the stories of her parents, cousins and grandparents, building a very human picture of Afghanistan's past and its present.

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  The Georgian Feast by D. Goldstein

  Price: £15.95    Add to Basket

  A wonderful book on the cultural and cuisine of Georgia. Includes a history of its culinary traditions followed by easy, delicious recipes.

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  A Writer at War by Vasily Grossman

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Grossman's Red Army journals, edited and notated ably here by Beevor and Vinogradova, make for fascinating reading in their own right. Best, however, read in conjunction with Grossman's magnificent novel of the same period, Life & Fate.

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  The Art and Architecture of Russia by George Heard Hamilton

  Price: £20.00    Add to Basket

  Hamilton's 1983 classic stands as an excellent history of the intriguing visual arts of Russia, from the Byzantine period through to the Twentieth Century.

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  All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945 by Max Hastings

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  A vast canvas of a book that incorporates thirty-five years of research on the Second World War. Hastings describes the course of events during the war, but focuses chiefly upon human experience, which varied immensely from campaign to campaign, continent to continent.

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  Junior Officers' Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  A memoir of a modern soldier fighting on the front line in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a vivid portrayal of life in the British army. Hennessey has 'a reporter's eye for detail and a soldier's nose for bullshit' in this revealing and candid autobiography.

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  The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative history of Reagan, Gorbachev and the final decade of the Cold War. Drawing on classified documents from deep within the Kremlin, Hoffman pieces together an intensely dramatic account of how the US/Soviet arms race came to a close.

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  Setting the East Ablaze by Peter Hopkirk

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  Lenin envisaged freeing the Caucasus from feudalism through Communism. This fascinating history of the final stages of the Great Game charts the Soviet attempt to conquer Central Asia and beyond.