Robert Chandler Books

Set against a backdrop of apocalyptic chaos, the story follows 15-year-old Violet and her father, Mateo, as they navigate survival in the devastated San Diego Zoo after catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis. With wild animals roaming free and toxic gases threatening their lives, the duo faces dwindling resources and rising tensions. Violet, recovering from injuries, taps into her emerging psychic abilities to uncover crucial clues, while Mateo fights to keep her safe. As they and other survivors seek an escape, one member makes a perilous choice that could change everything.

Completed in the late 1950s by its distinguished Russian author, this novel has been recognized as fiction on an epic scale: powerful, deeply moving, and devastating in its depiction of a world mutilated by war and ideological tyranny.

Exploring profound themes of love, loss, and the nature of faith, this narrative follows a man's journey to uncover the mysteries that shape his life. It challenges readers to ponder the existence of the soul and the beliefs we hold about unseen phenomena. Through a blend of personal reflection and philosophical inquiry, the story invites introspection on the unexplainable events in one's past, encouraging an open-minded approach to faith and belief. Prepare to engage with thought-provoking questions about the human experience.

"Whether romantic, realistic, surreal, mocking or blackly comic, poetry has been at the heart of Russian life and culture for centuries. This new anthology presents the best of Russian verse, from the 'Golden Age' of Pushkin and his contemporaries, through the symbolist Alexander Blok and twentieth-century masters such as Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva, and on to lesser-known and modern works."--Back cover

One of Pushkin’s most thrilling prose works, Dubrovsky follows the adventures of an aristocrat-turned-brigand and his audacious scheme for revenge. It is published here with the short story Egyptian Nights. Dubrovsky is the son of a landowner whose property has been confiscated by a corrupt and malicious general. After his father dies, and his faithful servants burn his ancestral home to the ground, Dubrovsky turns to crime. But to achieve his ultimate aim of avenging his father, he must resort to subtler means than banditry. Masquerading as a French tutor, he enters the General’s house and sets about beguiling his daughter. Asking hard questions of our faith in social institutions, in particular the law, Dubrovsky displays the considerable storytelling skill of Russia’s greatest poet. Alexander Pushkin wrote lyric and narrative poems, but his masterwork is the verse novel Eugene Onegin.

A short yet fascinating account of Russia's most celebrated writer. In Robert Chandler's exquisite biography, literary giant Alexander Pushkin, lauded as the Russian Shakespeare, is examined as writer, lover and public figure. Chandler explores his relationship to politics and provides a fascinating glimpse of the turbulent history Pushkin lived through. The book acts as a succinct guide to anybody trying to understand Russia's most celebrated literary figure and also illuminates the wider historical and political context of early nineteenth-century Russia.

Vasily Grossman wrote three novels about the Second World War, each offering a distinct take on what a war novel can be, and each extraordinary. A common set of characters links Stalingrad and Life and Fate, but Stalingrad is not only a moving and exciting story of desperate defense and the turning tide of war, but also a monumental memorial for the countless war dead. Life and Fate, by contrast, is a work of moral and political philosophy as well as a novel, and the deep question it explores is whether or not it is possible to behave ethically in the face of overwhelming violence. The People Immortal is something else entirely. Set during the catastrophic first months of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, this is the tale of an army battalion dispatched to slow the advancing enemy at any cost, with encirclement and annihilation its promised end. A rousing story of resistance, The People Immortal is the novel as weapon in hand.