Pre-Christmas shopping angst, so familiar to refugees from the all-consuming West, rises to the level of panic if the shopper happens to be stuck in Moscow for December.


What to do? You swallowed your ecological principles and bought fur last year. The charms of the old standby Izmailovo are starting to wear thin. Then your thoughts turn to the gift of a book. But where can English-language books be bought in Moscow?


Zwemmer bookstore is the best place to start. Housed in a wood-paneled store in Kuznetsky Most, there are no dragon-breathed assistants to stop you from handling the books. Although Zwemmer Moscow is a poor relation of the venerable London shop, its 7,000 English-language titles surpass the 200 or so at other Moscow stores.


But Zwemmer's stock is generally unimaginative, and availability is subject to both the tyranny of Russia's customs officials and the vagaries of fate -- the truck carrying the Christmas consignment of Penguin books fell off a bridge in Germany en route, although a replacement supply is said to be on the way.


Don't visit Zwemmer expecting to find Salman Rushdie's new volume of short stories "East, West," or "Swan," supermodel Naomi Campbell's allegedly unputdownable account of cat-walk shenanigans, or indeed anything that has already been published in the the United States, but has yet to appear in Britain. Zwemmer, for financial reasons, only stocks English books. Biographies, travel books and general non-fiction about Russia are all inexplicably thinly represented.


However, at any given time you are likely to find a fairly extensive selection of commercial and popular novels. And classics of Russian and English literature are available in appealing, giftworthy Everyman editions at ?8 ($12) a go, as well as in Penguin and Collins Harvill paperbacks. If it is Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" that you are after, however, you had better hurry. This title is consistently the shop's fastest seller, and as a result is usually out of stock.


Zwemmer is doing a special Christmas promotion this year on an extraordinary new photographic history of Russia, called "The Russian Century." A collection of 600 or so rare Russian photographs, with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and text by the British journalist Brian Moynahan, the book charts Russia's 20th-century history with all the brutality which black-and-white photographs can muster and makes for compelling reading.


Priced at $45, "The Russian Century" may be beyond some people's Christmas budgets. But those in search of cheaper presents should not despair. Zwemmer offers an eclectic selection of audio books ranging from Martin Cruz Smith's "Gorky Park" to an eight-tape audio edition of Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" for those who can interpret everything as a parable of Russian life.


Zwemmer also stocks a reasonable selection of children's books for all ages, some of which have Christmas themes. And finally, for the person who has everything but still thirsts for more, you can buy the complete 30-volume edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica -- priced at $3,390.


Beyond Zwemmer the choice narrows dramatically. However, fans of the horror writer Stephen King are in luck, for a wide selection of his novels are available in every outlet with any pretensions to selling foreign books. The price of a novel a la King varies dramatically, from 12,500 rubles (about $4) a title at Progress Books, to 20,000 rubles in Dom Knigi, to $9 a copy at The Bookshop on Ulitsa Vesnina.


The inappropriately named Dom Knigi has a curious selection of foreign books at bargain rates, as well as selling anything from Indian spices to office furniture and prohibitively priced Lego toys. There is also a small antiquarian book department for those of you who have worked out how to get these 19th-century tomes out of the country. A request for a Russian edition of Bulat Okudzhava's poetry, however, met with a disparaging shake of the head.


If it is revisionist history that you are after, ex-KGB general Pavel Sudaplatov's recently published memoirs, "Special Tasks," is available at 55,000 rubles, well below the official English price and Zwemmer's. And the latest novel by courtroom thriller writer John Grisham is also a hardcover bargain. Watch out, however, for Dom Knigi's unusual ploy of pricing its second-hand English books more expensively than the new editions.


Progress' selection of English books is disappointingly limited. Beyond the predictable range of glossy art books, dictionaries, English-language textbooks and Penguin popular classics, there is really nothing apart from the ubiquitous Stephen King. Some gray-looking children's books printed on cheap paper are uninspiring.


The Bookshop has pretensions to being a Western-style shop -- and allows one to pay by credit card -- but fails to live up to its promise. The hundred-odd commercial paperbacks on sale are all over-priced in dollars, and the hardcover section is desperately predictable.


If your Christmas will not be complete without a copy of James Kelman's expletive-rich Booker Prize-winning novel, "How Late It Was, How Late" or an intimate portrait of the Prince of Wales, or any of the other royals in a confessional mood, then your best bet is to order the books from abroad. Dillons Bookstores in Britain has launched an efficient-sounding new mail service, with many titles discounted, and deliveries of orders placed before Dec. 16 guaranteed to arrive by Christmas.





Zwemmer, Kuznetsky Most 18


Dom Knigi, Ulitsa Novy Arbat 26


Progress Books, Zubovsky Boulevard 17


The Bookshop, Ulitsa Vesnina 8/10


Dillons Direct Mail order service:


U.K. Phone number: (8-10-44) 345-125-704


U.K. Fax: (8-10-44) 992-524-552