[NOVY MIR]

Full set for 11 years (1962-1972). Overall 132 issues in 22 cloth bindings (original blue wrappers preserved). Occasional foxing, damp stains (vol.2 1968), front cover damaged (#12 1968). Otherwise very good.

Novy mir is one of the oldest monthly literary magazines in modern Russian. It has been published in Moscow since January 1925. It's base was Izvestiya publishing house, and in the first year it was edited and supervised by A.V. Lunacharsky and Yu. Steklov. At first, Novy Mir mainly published prose that approved of the general line of the Communist Party. In the early 1960s, it changed its political stance, leaning to a dissident position. The words ''Novy mir'', ''Tvardovski's magazine'' became symbolic, causing delight and respect among some readers, and gnashing of teeth among others (especially in official instances). A lot has been written about those years, about that edition, its fate, including on the pages of the magazine. Tvardovski's Novy Mir is one of the brightest pages in the history of Russian journalism. Tvardovski-editor became one of the most remarkable journalistic figures not only of the Soviet period. The magazine's active position in literary and social issues (expressed, of course, to the extent possible due to censorship harassment) in the 60s provoked both an open heated debate in the press and a tough backstage fight. In November 1962 the magazine became famous for publishing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's groundbreaking 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich', a novella about a prisoner of the Gulag (later all Solzhenitsyn's works were banned and the writer was removed from the USSR). The magazine continued publishing controversial articles and stories about various aspects of Soviet and Russian history despite
the fact that its editor-in-chief, Alexander Tvardovsky, facing significant political pressure, resigned in February 1970.

Seven decades, almost coinciding with the existence of the USSR, were not lived in an airless space by the magazine - together with the country and era. The history of Russian literature of the 20th century with all its difficulties and contradictions, with all its glory and shame is somehow captured on the pages of the Novy Mir. If you use the hackneyed expression "pillar road of literature", then this road always passed through the Novy Mir.

Among significant works published in this set are first appearance of Bulgakov's 'Theatrical Novel', first Solzhenitsyn's 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' and his other works, Tvardovsky's 'Tyorkin in the Other World', Fazil Iskander's 'The Goatibex Constellation', Chingiz Aitmatov's 'Farewell, Gulsary!', Vasil Bykov's «The Ordeal», Bondarev's 'Silence', Zalygin's 'On the Irtysh', Irina Grekova's 'On the Proving Grounds', Trifonov's 'The Exchange', and many others.

Such recognizable authors like B. Pasternak, Vsevolod Ivanov, Yury Tynyanov, I. Shmelev, V. Voinovich, N. Zabolotsky, Ilya Erenburg, A. Akhmatova, O. Bergoltz, V. Konashevich, D. Likhachyov, V. Grossman, D. Granin, B. Slutskii, M. Chudakova, Valentina Khodasevich, K. Bukovsky, Lev Ginzburg and many others were published. Some of them were banned or emigrated. Many more less familiar names are also in this set.

Translations were also a part of magazine's agenda - Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five', All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, works by J.D. Salinger, Albert Camus, Bertolt Brecht, Truman Capote, J. Morrison, R. Frost, E. Hemigway and many others. Even more interesting translations of less known writers and poets from around the world.