LGMW MAGAZINE

Do you hear that sound? Do you smell it – the heady fragrance of sour ale, rabbit pies fresh from the oven, and confidence rising with every drink? Ah, the western taverns of the Zemelands! This one is called the Four Moons, for reasons I suspect are mainly decorative. Unless someone had one tankard too many when naming it. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I’m getting dizzy with glee just listening. Half from the flutes and tambourines, half from the reckless enthusia

I've been reporting from one of the biggest bookfairs in the world – London Book Fair (LBF) for years, since 2009. Each year it features over a 1,000 exhibitors, over 34,000 professional attendees. Sounds impressive, right? Yes, but it has also become very... boring! No personal chats with authors, you can meet publishers by prior appointment only, and small publishers are lumped together under their countries' national flags, as if publishing is strictly the matter of your c

В мире, где все продается и покупается, где все вывернуто наизнанку и не осталось ничего, кроме цинизма, невозможно купить только хорошее настроение, только твой голос, только улыбку, твою улыбку, Илона! И невозможно купить красоту и стиль, невозможно купить личность. А у меня улыбка в душе. Ведь ты со мной, моя Илона. «Как вы познакомились?» — наиболее часто задаваемый нам с Илоной вопрос. Он уводит нас в главную загадку человеческих отношений. Как это получается, что с одни

Aquella mañana estaba tranquilamente ordenando pilas de toallas en la lavandería. A finales de noviembre, al comienzo de la temporada de esquí, aún había poco trabajo en el hotel. Todos esperaban una nevada copiosa. Agnes, mi jefa, asomó la cabeza por la puerta y, de pronto, me dedicó una amable sonrisa de treinta y dos dientes. Desde mi primer día de trabajo en el hotel, jamás había visto en su rostro otra expresión que no fuera la de una profunda preocupación, así que me qu

Are you afraid of the dark? Perfect. Now follow me into this oversized rabbit hole, though if you’re expecting anything as innocent as a tea party at the end of it, temper those expectations. You first notice the peculiar glow: four light spots floating like will-o’-the-wisps in a low, earthy tunnel. The walls and ceiling drip with the memories of countless rainy seasons. Roots dangle, resembling the skeletal fingers of some long-forgotten giant, swaying ever so slightly as i

Русский язык без России: международные русскоязычные и переводные журналы *ESOL = English for speakers of other languages With the outbreak of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, anti-war writers working in Russian have been confronted with a difficult question: what should they do with texts written in Russian? Should they stop writing and reading them? Should they switch to another language? There is no single answer to these difficult questions; each person must decid

Preface to the Excerpt from “Alex Green: The Clay Letter” (2023): Alex Green, a meticulous analytical chemist, and Asher Singer, a legendary maverick Professor of Archaeology, have formed an unlikely alliance to authenticate a sensational artefact: a 2,500-year-old clay tablet from the fall of Jerusalem. This "Clay Letter" becomes a scientific and political flashpoint, as its contents challenge the very foundations of religious tradition and national myth. In this scene, the

Once, in the most famous opera house in Paris, a terrible fire broke out. During the tragedy, the prima donna died, while her fiancé — a talented composer — survived but was left with a horribly disfigured face. After the accident, he disappeared from public life and was never seen in the theatre again. Soon, strange rumours began to spread. People said that the heartbroken musician had settled beneath the opera house and that, after his death, he became a ghost haunting the

Whoever lands on Mars first will have all the power imaginable. Or rather: whoever lands on Mars first will have all the power of imagination. Of those who first imagined the planets among those dots in the sky. Of those who first branched away from the flat‑Earth worldview and indeed separated knowledge from belief. Of those who created telescopes and calculated the orbits of the closest astronomical bodies. Of all those who were first in their tracks on this path and who ga

What does the word “happiness” mean, and what makes me happy? There is a Russian saying: one person complains that his pearls are too small, another – that his soup is too thin. Everyone has their own idea of happiness, and the criteria for this state change as life goes on. The more I observe myself and others, the more I become convinced that perhaps a person cannot be happy in principle. Or if they can, then only for a very brief moment. Right now, happiness for me mean

Happy is such a short word for everything that it entails. What makes me happy? Things that happen in my life. Not all the things, of course. But also, not only joyful ones. It makes me happy to feel alive, which means feeling all sorts of feelings – from excitement to sadness, from pleasure to pain, from relief of letting go to the loss of what mattered. Hap-py – can I call myself a happy person? I’m not sure. I can definitely call myself a “happening” person – I like this l

Anastasia Drapkina is originally from Kherson, Ukraine. She is multilingual. She fell in love with literature and languages thanks to books in her Ukrainian great-grandmother's house: a volume of Tyutchev made such a strong impression that she started writing poetry herself. When she grew up, she majored in Russian studies at Kyiv University. Then, full-scale war came to Ukraine. Nastya talks about the abolition of culture and language, responsibility, and coming to terms wit

Every place smells its own way. Any good dog will tell you that. Everything has a scent unlike anything else in the world. The kitchen, for example, always smells like the buns Mommy bakes, and Mrs. D — the old lady everyone oddly calls “the neighbour” — smells of her garden and the ancient yarn of her lavender cardigan. It’s impossible to confuse a forest lane at the edge of the city with a park square, even though Daddy insists on calling them the same thing. (Sometimes I t

Утреннее солнце озарило светлицу. Снег заискрился на белоснежных лавках и столе, укрытых зимним узором. Невозможно посчитать, сколько существует оттенков белого; может, даже и не нужно. Дополняют снежную гамму немного синевы и сероватый блеск зеркала. Она подошла к нему и заглянула в отражение озорных и ярких, как изумруды, глаз. Поправила белые рукава камзола, конечно же подбитого белым снегом. Снегом убрана и шапочка. Холодно ли девице? «Что за вопрос? — она бы ответила со

Photo © Valentina Corcoran В конце некоторых интервью интервьюер задаёт вопрос интервьюируемому: а что вы скажете Апостолу Петру, который открывает врата в Царствие Небесное, когда встретитесь с ним? Я примерила этот вопрос на себя: а что же я скажу, когда встречусь… Вот так и родилась зарисовка, — слегка хулиганская — если позволите… **** Кто не в курсе — Чаппи, йоркширский терьер, мальчик, 2,5 годика — это моя вселенная, моё всё. У нас с ним договор: постараемся жить долго

Из Книги Странных Историй В деревне Маофэн, в горах Хуаншань, жил старый сборщик чая по имени Лао Ван. Каждую весну, в дни сбора молодых листьев, он ещё до рассвета поднимался по каменистой тропе к единственному кусту, что рос из узкой трещины в скале. Куст был невелик — всего несколько ветвей, — но листья на них всегда оставались ярко-зелёными, будто светились изнутри. Лао Ван собирал ровно семь листьев. Ни больше, ни меньше. Потом разводил маленький костёр и заварив

This object is important because it is the only material memory left of my maternal grandmother. She never wore jewelry, not even a wedding band. Most likely, she didn’t have any jewelry to wear. I remember her in the same housedress for all occasions. My maternal grandparents lived their little lives in constant fear of something, a choked-up life of deprivation, one can say. The only sweet memory, the only luxury they had was Grandma’s piano that she played from time to tim

Lajos and Nina Kolozhvari There are two people on this picture thanks to whom I bear my remarkable surname: my grandfather, Lajos Kolozsvari, and my mother, Nina. When I first arrived in Budapest, I was stunned in front of a small church built in memory of those who were lost in the First World War. The bas-relief depicted a hussar falling from his horse, with God catching him like a son. I saw my grandfather in that hussar. His parents and sister never found out what had hap

This dish is important to me because it comes down through the years and has been one of those family ‘members’ that has always somehow been there. These ducks were transported from Nazi Germany to Australia, to England and then to me in France – we have many such objects, and even more photos, in our family - sometimes too many to cope with it feels… This dish sat for decades at Mumse and Michael’s, my paternal German Jewish grandparents’ home, where we would often go and ha

I have always loved trains. Sometimes they say that the genes have memory. Maybe it is true as one of my ancestors was involved in engineering of railways in 1870s when he moved to live to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro city in the Eastern Ukraine, founded in 1776). He was a German, Baron Von Beck if my spelling is correct. The peculiarity of the industrial development of Yekaterinoslav province was its internationalism. All this led to a boom in the region in the 1880s. This