I don’t know about you, but here at Hesperus HQ we are counting down the hours until the beginning of the August bank holiday weekend. We are excitedly keeping our fingers and toes crossed that we will be blessed with one last blast of sunshine before autumn begins to set in. It seems to be approaching all too quickly this year though – I woke up in a panic at 6AM this morning, completely horrified to find myself in darkness!
Anyway, I would now like to bring your attention to the latest Hesperus Press new releases – We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Brief Lives: Alexander Pushkin. I apologise in advance for the lengthy spiel, but I am posting the blurbs below to give you a flavour of these great books. So have a read, and make sure that your bank holiday plans now include purchasing copies from your local bookshop!
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (translated by Hugh Aplin, and with a foreword by Alan Sillitoe). 
Inside its glass dome, the One State is a place of mathematical precision, a community where everything is everyone’s and integrity, clarity and unerring loyalty reign over all. Δ-503, Constructor of the Integral, is an honest number, ashamed of the hairy hands that link him to a barbaric ancestry. It is this forbidden legacy that torments him by making him lust, that allows him to imagine, that has given him a soul. Consumed by his sickness and obsessed with the seductive and mysterious I-330, Δ-503 is led by his new lover outside the Wall, where he colludes in a plot to overthrow the Benefactor. As the Benefactor retaliates by ordering a state-administered Operation to return order to the perfect world, Δ-503 finds himself fighting for the primitive and natural state of chaos – and rebelling against all that he once held true.
A key work in the history of dystopian literature, Zamyatin’s We was hugely influential, shaping the writing of many other authors including Orwell and Huxley. Written in the1920s, and banned in the Soviet Union for over sixty years, We is still topical today, a portent of future totalitarian regimes, and an admonition that the battle for freedom is never over.
Brief Lives: Alexander Pushkin by Robert Chandler 
Alexander Pushkin is Russia’s greatest poet. In addition to his prodigious work in verse, he experimented with a variety of genres ranging from Shakespearean tragedy and dramatic miniatures to the short story and the historical novel. He was often responsible for completing the first work of each type in the Russian language. Dostoevsky claimed that Pushkin embodied the Russian soul, and artists including Tchaikovsky, Mikhail Bulgakov and Nikolai Gogol have been inspired by his life and work. He was witness to important events in the turbulent political history of early nineteenth-century Russia.
This exquisite biography by an award-winning translator examines Pushkin as writer, lover and public figure; it acts as a succinct and sympathetic guide for anybody trying to understand Russia’s most celebrated poet – and, indeed, Russia itself.
All for now, LB
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