Eksmo (Russian: Эксмо) is one of the largest publishing houses in Russia.^[1][2] Eksmo and AST (which it later acquired in 2012) together publish approximately 30% of all Russian books.^[3]

Established in 1991 as a small book-selling company, Eksmo gradually developed into a major player in the Russian market, discovering and developing detective-novel authors such as Darya Dontsova and Alexandra Marinina, as well as publishing works by Tatyana Tolstaya, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Tatiana Vedenska, and Viktor Pelevin. Eksmo has become especially successful as a publisher of Russian science fiction and fantasy, with writers like Sergey Lukyanenko, Yuri Nikitin, Vasily Golovachev, Nick Perumov, Vera Kamsha, Vadim Panov and Tony Vilgotsky.^[4]

Other book series published by Eksmo include the Mona Lisa series of Russian-language translations of authors such as Mary Stewart.^[5]

In 2011 Eksmo received criticism for publishing books which glorify Stalin and his henchmen, such as "Renaissance of Stalin", "Beria, the best manager of the 20th century" (Берия — лучший менеджер XX века, 2008) by S. Kremlev, and "Handbook of a Stalinist" (Настольная книга сталиниста, 2010) by Yuri Zhukov. A group of writers and artists, including Alexander Gelman signed an open letter questioning its editorial policy.^[6] Oleg Novikov, the director of the publishing house, responded that he felt obligated to cater to the taste of his readers, and not to censor them.^[7]

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