About Us

Istros Books - where quality has no borders

If imagining parts of Eastern Europe conjures up images of grey tower blocks and pickled cabbage, Istros Books is here to change that. Our mission is to shine a light on part of that ‘other’ Europe and reveal its glories through the works of its greatest writers, both old and new. We endeavour to find the best from a wealth of local prose and poetry and to offer it to a new audience of English speakers.

At Istros, we believe that high-quality literature can transcend national interests and speak to us with the common voice of human experience. Discovering contemporary voices and rediscovering forgotten ones, Istros Books works hard to bring you the best that European literature can offer.

What's in a name?

After a great deal of thinking about the areas of Europe we wanted to cover and the image we wanted to create, we came up with the name Istros Books. Istros is the old Greek and Thracian name for the lower Danube River, which winds its way down from its source in Germany and crosses many of the countries of South-East Europe: Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. Its watershed also extends to other neighbouring countries, with one of the main Danubian tributaries, the Sava, serving Slovenia and Bosnia/Herzegovina, while also feeding the waterways of Macedonia and Montenegro. These, then, are the countries of focus for Istros Books, set against an image of the Danube flowing carelessly across the borders of Europe: encapsulating the ideal of knowledge's free flow and the cultural exchange that good literature can promote.

In 2013, we have split our titles into 2 new series: Best Balkan Books and Books from the Edge:
By grouping the Balkan books together, we want to profile them as phenomena in their own right, capitalising on the sighlty edgy reputation of the region in order to attract readers to these original and rewarding group of writers from Romania, Montenegro and Serbia.


Books from the Edge are from those countries which lie partly outside the Balkans and partly in: the fruitful borderland of ‘the Edge’. This year’s titles come from Croatia and – for the first time– from Turkey. We are planning to present both books and their authors at the London Book Fair 2013, where Turkey will be the country of focus, and Croatia will have a national stand for the first time!