Böcker av Vitali Vitaliev

Ukrainian-born journalist Vitali Vitaliev takes a journey around Britain in search of that most elusive of ideas - utopia. Laced with humour and trenchant insight, he reflects on utopian ideals in the United Kingdom and his own Soviet upbringing.

"Granny Yaga follows the switchback adventures of a boy called Danny, growing up in North London where the local she-dragons are notorious fighters, and any alert passer-by can spot Granny herself flying low over the British Museum. Danny becomes Granny's aide-de-camp in a life-or-death duel with the demon Koschei, fought out in the London underground, in disused stations, boarded-up houses and the enchanted skies over Crouch End, with back-up from the relatively orthodox magic of Yesterdayland (huts on chicken legs, talking cats, self-catering tablecloths) and the realpolitik of its neighbouring Soviet satellite, a land of cruel edicts and capricious tsars where the workers and permanently drunk, and the loo seats belonging to each family in a communal flat hang side by side on the wall 'like luckless horseshoes'. A gripping read for all ages, from Danny's to Granny's." Hilary Spurling"Delightfully inventive. Wickedly funny." Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian