Specialist Waterstones Russian bookshop in London

Waterstones is to open a Russian-language "bookshop" within its flagship London Piccadilly store in February. The high street bookseller was bought by Russian oligarch Alexander Mamut’s A&NN Group in June last year, and the businessman was behind the idea to open the new bookshop—which will be called "Slova", Russian for "words".

It will be based on Piccadilly’s ground floor mezzanine level and contain nearly 5,000 titles, taking up 1,200 sq ft of space. Mamut also has a stake in Azbooka-Atticus, a Russian publisher, whose titles Waterstones will stock in Slova along with other Russian-language titles and Russian books in translation, covering areas such as history, art, poetry, fiction, biography and children’s. Slova will also be working closely with Academia Rossica, the Russian culture and arts foundation based in London, in planning author events, book launches and other activities.