"Julia Hillpatrick" has become familiar to Russian readers as the author of at least half a dozen mindless sequels to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" sold by Moscow street booksellers. According to Knizhnoye Obozreniye (Book Review), the word is that the name is actually a joint nom de plume for a group of more than 10 romantically minded Russian men of letters who have been churning out the novels without copyright approval from the United States.


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For those trying to catch up on all that is "unorthodox" in the Russian language, Russkiye Slovari has just come out with Moscow Argot, a new hardcover dictionary of conversational speech compiled by Professor Vladimir Yelistratov of Moscow State University. The book, which is available now for about 8,000 rubles, is proving popular with readers, but is still considered to fall behind Zhivaya Rech (Live Language): Dictionary of Colloquial Expressions, published by the Soros Foundation-sponsored Kulturnaya Initsiativa.


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Russian tourists can now travel abroad in a civilized fashion, enjoying reliable guidebooks to the countries they are visiting, issued in their native language. Illustrated Russian-language guides to Italy, Greece, Turkey, France and North America have been published by Dubl V, a private publishing house working under the license of Polyglot, a German company. Additional books for Israel, Spain, Thailand, Cyprus and England will be issued over the next two months. Thirty in all are scheduled to be published by the end of next year.