★This book Won The Big Book Award 2011,Haus der Kulturen der Welt International Literature Award 2011,Shortlisted for the The Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2013!
★Rights sold to World English, China, German, France, Spain, Japan, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Latvia, Estonia,Bulgaria,Romania,Hungary,Arabic Arab, Albania, Turkey, Israel, Portugal, India and many other countries!
★The author Mikhail Shishkin —— WINNER OF BIG BOOK AWARD 2011, BIG BOOK AWARD 2006,NATIONAL BESTSELLER PRIZE 2005, BOOKER PRIZE 2000!
★The book was regarded as a great event in the Russian literary world when it was not published, and it was highly appraised by many domestic and foreign critics, media and scholars after it was published.
★The book is an epistolary novel about love and death, pain and happiness, light and darkness, war and peace. The author brings each character in the novel to life by giving the reader an immersive reading experience that lingers long time even after the book is closed.
★English translations available.

This latest novel by Mikhail Shishkin is deceivingly simple. A man. A woman. Their love letters. A summer house, the first love. Vladimir – Vovka-carrot-top and Alexandra – Sashka; he goes to war, she stays at home, living an ordinary life. Two people writing each other just about everything – their childhood, families, trifles of life, joys and sorrows – what could be more normal? Until we get to know things are not what they seem. The deeper readers emerge into the writing the more obvious it becomes that the time has been disunited, dissected and tossed together as in a children nonsense rhyme.

Thee time is indeed out of joint and only these letters bind it together restoring the world’s order. She lives in the 60-s, he goes to the Boxers uprising in China at the turn of the twentieth century.
He dies in the very first battle of this half-forgotten war of his own choosing (“What war? Doesn’t matter. A war has always been. And will always be. And people get injuries and killed. And death is real”) – but his letters continue to arrive. She gets married, carries and loses a child – and keeps writing to him as if these letters exist in a parallel universe, as if time doesn’t matter – and neither does death.
This is a novel about the mysteries of life – and acceptance of death. Shishkin is loyal to articulating his principle: the written word is the key, and so is love. “To exist you have to live not in your own mind that is so unreliable… but in the mind of another person, and not just any person but the one who cares if you exist”. Shishkin’s sophisticated language and intricate style have won him major international literary awards and comparisons to the greatest authors of our time – and Letterbook firmly confirms this well-deserved reputation.

Mikhail Shishkin
Mikhail Shishkin, born January 18, 1961 in Moscow, based in Switzerland since 1995, is one of the most prominent names in the modern Russian literature. Before becoming a writer he worked as school teacher and journalist. His writing debut in 1993, Calligraphy Lesson, a short story translated into French and Finnish, has won him the prize for the Best Debut of the Year. Since then his work – both fi ction and non-fi ction – has been translated into over 25 languages and have received a large number of prestigious national and international awards, including Haus der Kulturen der Welt International Literature Award, The Big Book Award, The National Bestseller Prize, and many others.
Mikhail Shishkin’s prose fuses the best of the Russian and European literary traditions. The richness and sophistication of the language, the unique rhythm and melody of a phrase, the endless play with words and the nuanced psychological undercurrent are reminiscent of Nabokov and Chekhov. The change of narration styles and narrators within a text yield a fragmented, mosaic structure of composition that focuses on the language itself, recalling James Joyce’s genius.

Selected list of prizes and awards:
2013 Shortlisted for the The Leipzig Book Fair Prize, Germany
2011 The Big Book Award, Russia
2011 Haus der Kulturen der Welt International Literature Award, Germany
2007 Halpérine-Kaminski Prize for the Best Translation (Laure Troubeckoy), France
2007 Shortlisted for Giuseppe Berto Prize, Italy
2007 Grinzane Cavour Prize, Italy Peoples Literature Publishing, Peking: The Best Foreign Book of the Year of the 21st Century, China
2006 Shortlisted for Bunin Literary Award, Russia
2006 The Big Book Award, Russia
2006 Shortlisted for Andrei Belyi Literary Award, Russia
2005 The National Bestseller Prize, Russia
2005 The Best Foreign Book of the Year / Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (essay), France
2002 The Main Literary Prize of Zürich (Werkjahr), Switzerland
2000 The Russian Booker Prize for the Best Russian Novel of the Year, Russia
2000 The Globus Prize, Russia
2000 Literary Prize of Canton Zürich, Switzerland
1994 Prize for the Best Debut of the Year, Russia