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Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia
Featuring some of Russia's most prestigious post-Soviet writers, New Fiction from a New Russia portrays the range of aesthetics and subject matter faced by a generation that never knew Communism. Few countries have undergone more radical transformations than Russia has since the fall of the Soviet Union. The stories in New Fiction from a New Russia present twenty-two depictions of the new Russia from its most talented young writers. Selected from the pages of the top Russian literary magazines and written by winners of the most prestigious literary awards, most of these stories appear here in English for the first time.
375 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2009
8 people are currently reading
161 people want to read
About the author
Mikhail Iossel
9 books13 followersMikhail Iossel was born in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia), where he worked as an electromagnetic engineer and belonged to an organization of samizdat writers before immigrating to the United States in 1986.
He is the author of Notes from Cyberground: Trumpland and My Old Soviet Feeling and one previous collection of fiction: Every Hunter Wants to Know.
A frequent contributor to the New Yorker, his stories and essays have also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, Ecotone, Guernica, Tikkun, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
Iossel, a Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and Stegner Fellow, has taught in universities throughout the United States and is an associate professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal.
He is the author of Notes from Cyberground: Trumpland and My Old Soviet Feeling and one previous collection of fiction: Every Hunter Wants to Know.
A frequent contributor to the New Yorker, his stories and essays have also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, Ecotone, Guernica, Tikkun, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
Iossel, a Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and Stegner Fellow, has taught in universities throughout the United States and is an associate professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal.
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October 23, 2019
I always wondered how contemporary Russian fiction looked like, because when discussing Russian literature, readers always talk about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov and Turgenev and Pushkin and other 19th century greats – writers who are affectionately called the 'Dead Russians' now. Sometimes readers talk about writers who can be termed as 'dissident writers' – writers who resisted the Soviet regime and whose books were banned in the Soviet Union – writers like Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, Akhmatova, Shalamov, Zamyatin. But contemporary writers are rarely mentioned. Russians, of course, still read today. Their love for books is legendary. I am sure there are still Russian writers who write books for these readers, books set in contemporary Russia, which talk about how today's Russians live their lives, how they fall in love, what kind of work they do, how they respond to political developments, the relationship between Russian parents and their children, these and other contemporary themes which are relevant today. I wondered who these writers were and how I could get their books. Then I discovered 'Rasskazy : New Fiction from a New Russia'. I was thrilled.
'Rasskazy' has 22 stories. Each of these stories is by a different writer. So that is 22 new writers – whoohoo! Some of these stories are a few pages long, many of them are around 10 pages long, some of them are even longer. The longest has 43 pages.
Now a little about my reading experience. I got this book a long time back. I read the first 100 pages of the book at that time, but then got distracted. When I started reading the book again now, I remembered liking the first hundred pages, though I couldn't remember the stories. I decided to read the book differently this time. I decided to read the last one-third first, followed by the middle one-third and then the first one-third. When I started reading the last one-third, a strange thing happened. I read one story and then the next and then a third. Nothing much happened. I went on and read five stories and still there was nothing. I was expecting moving stories and profound passages, but, unfortunately, it was hard reading. It was like I could understand every word in the story, but couldn't get the story. I wondered what was happening. I wondered whether I should continue reading the book. I felt like I was hemmed in at the top of the mountain with nowhere to go. Then Natalya Klyuchareva arrived like the legendary Tolkien eagle, picked me up and soared high into the sky. She delivered a beautiful, stunning masterpiece called 'One Year in Paradise'. That was the end of the book as I knew it. This transformed new book was a different being, an amazing thing. I screamed with joy. It was one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read.
Things got better after that. I read the middle one-third and then the first one-third, and discovered other beautiful stories I liked.
Here are some of my favourite stories from the book and what I think about them.
(1) One Year in Paradise by Natalya Klyuchareva – This is my most favourite story from the book. It was the last story featured in the book. In this story, a man moves from the city to the countryside, in the middle of nowhere, and decides to live there. He just has a bag filled with books. What happens to him is the rest of the story. Such a quintessential Russian story, such a beautiful one. If you would like to read it, you can find it here – https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/one...
(2) A Potential Customer by Ilya Kochergin – A young man who works as a hunter and a trapper in the Russian Far East, goes back to Moscow for a month. He goes to deliver a package to his friend's aunt and there he meets a young woman with whom he falls in love. What happens after that is the rest of the story.
(3) History by Roman Senchin – A history scholar visits a bookshop, buys a book and is walking to the metro station to get back home. There is a political protest happening in front of the metro station and somehow our scholar gets trapped in the middle of that. And then bad things start happening. An insightful commentary on the situation in Russia today.
(4) The Diesel Stop by Arkady Babchenko – A young soldier goes home on leave to attend his father's funeral. He comes back late to report for duty. The army establishment assumes that he was trying to desert. He is arrested. The strange, crazy things that happen to him form the rest of the story. This was the longest story in the book.
(5) The Killer and his Little Friend by Zakhar Prilepin – Describes the friendship between two soldiers in the army, one who is a giant, and another who is small. Makes us think of George and Lennie from John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men'.
(6) D.O.B. by Aleksander Snegirev – A young man goes through a series of adventures on his birthday, getting into trouble, one after the other.
(7) Why the Sky Doesn't Fall by German Sadulaev – a story set in Chechnya during the war, mostly told from the Chechnyan perspective.
(8) Have Mercy, Your Majesty Fish by Olga Zondberg – describes the life of a blogger.
(9) Bregovich's Sixth Journey by Oleg Zobern – describes the friendship between a man and his neighbour's dog, whom he calls Ivan Denisovich.
(10) Russian Halloween by Aleksander Bezzubtsev-Kondakov – a man moves from the middle of the city to the outskirts after his divorce. He is depressed because he misses the city. But then strange, surprisingly pleasant things happen to him, unexpectedly.
(11) Spit by Kirill Ryabov – a man who is committed to an institution gets released after he is cured of his illness. How he navigates the wild world outside is the rest of the story.
(12) Drill and Song Day by Vladimir Kozlov – the story of the friendship between three boys in school who are outsiders in different ways.
I enjoyed reading 'Rasskazy'. It was wonderful to discover so many new contemporary Russian writers in one place. I am especially happy to have discovered Natalya Klyuchareva. I can't wait to read more stories by her and by the others.
Have you read 'Rasskazy'? What do you think about it? Would you like to recommend some of your favourite contemporary Russian writers?
'Rasskazy' has 22 stories. Each of these stories is by a different writer. So that is 22 new writers – whoohoo! Some of these stories are a few pages long, many of them are around 10 pages long, some of them are even longer. The longest has 43 pages.
Now a little about my reading experience. I got this book a long time back. I read the first 100 pages of the book at that time, but then got distracted. When I started reading the book again now, I remembered liking the first hundred pages, though I couldn't remember the stories. I decided to read the book differently this time. I decided to read the last one-third first, followed by the middle one-third and then the first one-third. When I started reading the last one-third, a strange thing happened. I read one story and then the next and then a third. Nothing much happened. I went on and read five stories and still there was nothing. I was expecting moving stories and profound passages, but, unfortunately, it was hard reading. It was like I could understand every word in the story, but couldn't get the story. I wondered what was happening. I wondered whether I should continue reading the book. I felt like I was hemmed in at the top of the mountain with nowhere to go. Then Natalya Klyuchareva arrived like the legendary Tolkien eagle, picked me up and soared high into the sky. She delivered a beautiful, stunning masterpiece called 'One Year in Paradise'. That was the end of the book as I knew it. This transformed new book was a different being, an amazing thing. I screamed with joy. It was one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read.
Things got better after that. I read the middle one-third and then the first one-third, and discovered other beautiful stories I liked.
Here are some of my favourite stories from the book and what I think about them.
(1) One Year in Paradise by Natalya Klyuchareva – This is my most favourite story from the book. It was the last story featured in the book. In this story, a man moves from the city to the countryside, in the middle of nowhere, and decides to live there. He just has a bag filled with books. What happens to him is the rest of the story. Such a quintessential Russian story, such a beautiful one. If you would like to read it, you can find it here – https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/one...
(2) A Potential Customer by Ilya Kochergin – A young man who works as a hunter and a trapper in the Russian Far East, goes back to Moscow for a month. He goes to deliver a package to his friend's aunt and there he meets a young woman with whom he falls in love. What happens after that is the rest of the story.
(3) History by Roman Senchin – A history scholar visits a bookshop, buys a book and is walking to the metro station to get back home. There is a political protest happening in front of the metro station and somehow our scholar gets trapped in the middle of that. And then bad things start happening. An insightful commentary on the situation in Russia today.
(4) The Diesel Stop by Arkady Babchenko – A young soldier goes home on leave to attend his father's funeral. He comes back late to report for duty. The army establishment assumes that he was trying to desert. He is arrested. The strange, crazy things that happen to him form the rest of the story. This was the longest story in the book.
(5) The Killer and his Little Friend by Zakhar Prilepin – Describes the friendship between two soldiers in the army, one who is a giant, and another who is small. Makes us think of George and Lennie from John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men'.
(6) D.O.B. by Aleksander Snegirev – A young man goes through a series of adventures on his birthday, getting into trouble, one after the other.
(7) Why the Sky Doesn't Fall by German Sadulaev – a story set in Chechnya during the war, mostly told from the Chechnyan perspective.
(8) Have Mercy, Your Majesty Fish by Olga Zondberg – describes the life of a blogger.
(9) Bregovich's Sixth Journey by Oleg Zobern – describes the friendship between a man and his neighbour's dog, whom he calls Ivan Denisovich.
(10) Russian Halloween by Aleksander Bezzubtsev-Kondakov – a man moves from the middle of the city to the outskirts after his divorce. He is depressed because he misses the city. But then strange, surprisingly pleasant things happen to him, unexpectedly.
(11) Spit by Kirill Ryabov – a man who is committed to an institution gets released after he is cured of his illness. How he navigates the wild world outside is the rest of the story.
(12) Drill and Song Day by Vladimir Kozlov – the story of the friendship between three boys in school who are outsiders in different ways.
I enjoyed reading 'Rasskazy'. It was wonderful to discover so many new contemporary Russian writers in one place. I am especially happy to have discovered Natalya Klyuchareva. I can't wait to read more stories by her and by the others.
Have you read 'Rasskazy'? What do you think about it? Would you like to recommend some of your favourite contemporary Russian writers?
July 6, 2010
Rasskazy-defined as narratives, stories, tales
Edited by Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker
Rasskazy is a collection of excerpts and short stories set throughout Russia, and provides a more positive depiction of Moscow than last week’s Moscow Noir. This is completely different from other selections I’ve read from Russia, and much of it has a level of humor not always associated with Russian writing.
The “New Russia” is evident everywhere, as there isn’t many references to the old Cold War struggles of poverty, crime, and brutality. They may make a brief appearance, but it certainly isn’t a theme. These appear to be younger writers, creating a new and lighter style. In They Talk, an eavesdropper hears the secrets and silliness in other people’s conversations: “…and until the dog kicks the bucket, you’re not moving it from that apartment.” Or, “…when he loved me, I wasn’t jealous, and when he didn’t love me-I was. I’d start calling, aggravating both myself and him, until one time an ambulance came for me.” The little fragments of conversation are both poignant and funny. They could be heard anywhere, and that re-emphasizes the theme a “new Russia”.
Another story, A Potential Customer, reveals what a young man gets out of his visit to an old friend: “I must tell others of my life, in order to see my reflection in their pupils.” As he visits Moscow after an absence, he’s waiting for his reappearance to be significant. He goes out and stands in the square. “I was prepared to be noticed, my plans had allowed for it as an integral part of my vacation, but Moscow sailed past….the depressing suspicion crept in that this time, as if out of spite, everything would be just as it had been a thousand times before….My native city would not recognize me.”
Or the lonely blogger, in Have Mercy, Your Majesty Fish, who finds a mysterious commenter is the only one of many who understands her posts. His cryptic responses leave her hanging…
My favorite of the collection is Bregovich’s Sixth Journey, by Oleg Zobern, about a professor who travels out of Moscow for some quiet space to work on papers. His drunken neighbor keeps a starving dog in the frozen yard. “One time I thought I saw barbed wire strung around his doghouse, with little guard towers standing around it. That would make the space between the house and the shed, where Ivan Denisovich’s doghouse sits, into a little one-dog prison camp.” The narrator feeds the dog, plays his music too loud, and tries to understand the Russian literature he assigns his students. “I find it hard to study this stuff because it’s so close to me; it’s where I live, in a way. The further back you go in the century, the simpler it is, everything’s in its place….I divide the writers into the living and the dead and begin with the dead…The dead: they’re like family to me already.” In the end, the dog named after Solzhenitsyn’s famous prisoner is released to roam free. An action that becomes symbolic of the Russian people in this new time as a whole.
The collection is huge, and would make a great selection for course adoption in a Russian history class.
Edited by Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker
Rasskazy is a collection of excerpts and short stories set throughout Russia, and provides a more positive depiction of Moscow than last week’s Moscow Noir. This is completely different from other selections I’ve read from Russia, and much of it has a level of humor not always associated with Russian writing.
The “New Russia” is evident everywhere, as there isn’t many references to the old Cold War struggles of poverty, crime, and brutality. They may make a brief appearance, but it certainly isn’t a theme. These appear to be younger writers, creating a new and lighter style. In They Talk, an eavesdropper hears the secrets and silliness in other people’s conversations: “…and until the dog kicks the bucket, you’re not moving it from that apartment.” Or, “…when he loved me, I wasn’t jealous, and when he didn’t love me-I was. I’d start calling, aggravating both myself and him, until one time an ambulance came for me.” The little fragments of conversation are both poignant and funny. They could be heard anywhere, and that re-emphasizes the theme a “new Russia”.
Another story, A Potential Customer, reveals what a young man gets out of his visit to an old friend: “I must tell others of my life, in order to see my reflection in their pupils.” As he visits Moscow after an absence, he’s waiting for his reappearance to be significant. He goes out and stands in the square. “I was prepared to be noticed, my plans had allowed for it as an integral part of my vacation, but Moscow sailed past….the depressing suspicion crept in that this time, as if out of spite, everything would be just as it had been a thousand times before….My native city would not recognize me.”
Or the lonely blogger, in Have Mercy, Your Majesty Fish, who finds a mysterious commenter is the only one of many who understands her posts. His cryptic responses leave her hanging…
My favorite of the collection is Bregovich’s Sixth Journey, by Oleg Zobern, about a professor who travels out of Moscow for some quiet space to work on papers. His drunken neighbor keeps a starving dog in the frozen yard. “One time I thought I saw barbed wire strung around his doghouse, with little guard towers standing around it. That would make the space between the house and the shed, where Ivan Denisovich’s doghouse sits, into a little one-dog prison camp.” The narrator feeds the dog, plays his music too loud, and tries to understand the Russian literature he assigns his students. “I find it hard to study this stuff because it’s so close to me; it’s where I live, in a way. The further back you go in the century, the simpler it is, everything’s in its place….I divide the writers into the living and the dead and begin with the dead…The dead: they’re like family to me already.” In the end, the dog named after Solzhenitsyn’s famous prisoner is released to roam free. An action that becomes symbolic of the Russian people in this new time as a whole.
The collection is huge, and would make a great selection for course adoption in a Russian history class.
June 25, 2017
Read this for a taste of new Russian voices. In particular, read the story Rules by Anna Starobinets. It will not only take away your breath, it will take away your sanity. With the very last line. You think only Stephen King can scare you properly? Think again. I have put all of Anna's books on my reading list. I'm a new fan.
March 8, 2018
See my review at: http://friendsofatticus.com/2015/02/1...
January 13, 2011
This is my first book for the Eastern European Reading Challenge hosted by The Black Sheep Dances by Amy Henry. http://www.theblacksheepdances.com/p/...
Rasskazy is a collection of short stories by Russian authors born from 1969 and after. It's really an exciting collection, showcasing what Russians are writing today as they examine the present, absorb their past and look toward to the future.
My favorite stories include 'Bregovich's Sixth Journey' by Oleg Zobern about a starving dog who is chained and confined to a cold, frozen-over yard. The author, who finds the dog in a neighboring dacha, names him "Ivan Denisovich ...in honor of the famous prisoner (Solzhenitsyn's)." But happily, in the end, after suffering considerably, Ivan Denisovich's sentence is over. He is set free "and now he roams through the great spaces of our homeland."
'The Unbelievable and Tragic History of Misha Shtrikov and His Cruel Wife' by Vadim Kalinin is a dryly funny story about Misha, who gets caught by his wife Masha in a compromising position with his boyfriend. The boyfriend, immediately, upon getting caught, "...jumps out of the window, breaking the glass and two of his ribs..." What Masha has planned for poor Misha next is both cruel and unbelievable.
'Why the Sky Doesn't Fall' by German Sadulaev is an autobiographical piece, dealing with the war in Chechnya, as told from the perspective of a Chechen. Sadulaev writes, "Strawberries grow well in fields watered with thick, rich human blood." Very tragic and reminiscent of the Stalinist era.
This is a really great collection by post-Soviet Russian writers. It's new, fresh and revealing.
Rasskazy is a collection of short stories by Russian authors born from 1969 and after. It's really an exciting collection, showcasing what Russians are writing today as they examine the present, absorb their past and look toward to the future.
My favorite stories include 'Bregovich's Sixth Journey' by Oleg Zobern about a starving dog who is chained and confined to a cold, frozen-over yard. The author, who finds the dog in a neighboring dacha, names him "Ivan Denisovich ...in honor of the famous prisoner (Solzhenitsyn's)." But happily, in the end, after suffering considerably, Ivan Denisovich's sentence is over. He is set free "and now he roams through the great spaces of our homeland."
'The Unbelievable and Tragic History of Misha Shtrikov and His Cruel Wife' by Vadim Kalinin is a dryly funny story about Misha, who gets caught by his wife Masha in a compromising position with his boyfriend. The boyfriend, immediately, upon getting caught, "...jumps out of the window, breaking the glass and two of his ribs..." What Masha has planned for poor Misha next is both cruel and unbelievable.
'Why the Sky Doesn't Fall' by German Sadulaev is an autobiographical piece, dealing with the war in Chechnya, as told from the perspective of a Chechen. Sadulaev writes, "Strawberries grow well in fields watered with thick, rich human blood." Very tragic and reminiscent of the Stalinist era.
This is a really great collection by post-Soviet Russian writers. It's new, fresh and revealing.
June 11, 2011
I thought this collection when taken as a whole is very interesting. A variety of writing styles, narrative lengths, and ethnic backgrounds represented. The Russian authors who wrote these stories are not trying to write for publication in American magazines so there is more variety than in many recent American collections. I found the different perspectives presented on some of the same events very interesting -- there are a variety of points of view provided for the Chechen war, including some from Chechen perspectives.
October 25, 2012
I won this on good reads and seems how it is a collection of short stories, I will review each story and then say what I think about the book as a whole. I think that this is fair to both the reader and the stories themselves.
They Talk: Very well written and it takes a little to get used to at first. It is done as though the writer were in a public place listening in on other peoples conversations and these are the sip its that he found interesting. I would have to give it 5/5.
They Talk: Very well written and it takes a little to get used to at first. It is done as though the writer were in a public place listening in on other peoples conversations and these are the sip its that he found interesting. I would have to give it 5/5.
December 18, 2012
These stories (which is what rasskazy means in Russian) come from the latest generation of Russian writers, born between 1969 and 1982, who grew up as: the Soviet Union stumbled through the seventies and eighties, and finally fell to pieces; Boris Yeltsin drank and danced through years of violence, chaos and corruption; and Vladimir Putin re-established a semblance of order through censorship and the re-centralization of power. These writers come a generation after the caustic allegories of Viktor Pelevin and Vladimir Surovov. How a national literature proceeds forward under these conditions is a puzzle. "Rasskazy" provides a variety of solutions to that puzzle. One is to capture new modes of communication, by having characters blog rather then talk as Olga Zondberg does in "Have Mercy, Your Majesty Fish." Or depict society as a series of overheard, atomized conversations as in Linor Goralik's "They Talk." Vidam Kalinin seems to want to trump Pelevin and Surovov in "The Unbelievable and Tragic History of Misha Strikov and his Cruel Wife", which starts with "Please let's do this without too much cynicism!" and then proceeds to a series of events that would be inhumane if the characters were more than stick figures. In that context, the stories of disappointed love in Nikolai Epikhin's "Richeva" and Ilya Kochergin's "A Potential Customer" come as a kind of relief. The blistering core of the collection come in the early middle section with a pair of tales on a theme as old as Tolstoy and Lermontov: Russia's misadventures in the Caucusus and a vision of war that makes Joseph Heller's look mild. Arkady Babchenko's "Diesel Stop" and German Sadulaev's "Why the Sky Doesn't Fall" are gripping, the first a fictional account of an Army labor camp, the second a memoir of a Chechen community during the war with Russia. Aleksandr Shegirev in D.O.B." explores the danger of being an immigrant. Zakhar Prilepin's "The Killer and His Little Friend" provides almost a summation of the themes in previous stories of war, cruelty and betrayal. The strongest pieces are unblinking assessments very much in the tradition of Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn.
November 29, 2009
Rasskazy is a collection of short stories (twenty-two, to be exact) by contemporary Russian authors. All the authors are relatively young; there's a list of contributors in the back of the book with information about each writer, and nearly all of them were born in the 1970s or later. It gives the stories an interesting perspective, since most of them came of age after the Soviet Union disbanded.
I thought the stories were a mixed bag. Some I loved (Drill and Song Day, One Year in Paradise), some I liked (D.O.B., Rules), and a few I didn't care for (The Unbelievable and Tragic History...). Without exception, all the stories are bleak. That's okay though; I happen to like bleak. I felt like curling up on the couch with a shot of vodka and contemplating my own life after reading this book;-). All in all, the stories provide a nice (if bleak) insight into modern day Russia.
I thought the stories were a mixed bag. Some I loved (Drill and Song Day, One Year in Paradise), some I liked (D.O.B., Rules), and a few I didn't care for (The Unbelievable and Tragic History...). Without exception, all the stories are bleak. That's okay though; I happen to like bleak. I felt like curling up on the couch with a shot of vodka and contemplating my own life after reading this book;-). All in all, the stories provide a nice (if bleak) insight into modern day Russia.
January 22, 2011
Overall it was interesting to know what's being written today in Russia, but unless you have a pre-existing fascination with Russia to keep you going (as I do), it's not a terribly worthwhile slog. There are three or four good, absorbing stories in the mix, and these Chechen war stories by Arkady Babchenko which are absolutely incredible, but most of the stories I found boring despite trying really hard to like them. The good stories are SO good though that they made me give this 3 stars in the end.
With collections like these I imagine it must be tough to balance the imperative to entertain vs. the desire to educate and provide a balanced, broad survey, and I wonder if maybe this collection tipped too far on the side of educating.
With collections like these I imagine it must be tough to balance the imperative to entertain vs. the desire to educate and provide a balanced, broad survey, and I wonder if maybe this collection tipped too far on the side of educating.
April 21, 2011
A truly, profoundly excellent collection which presents a stunningly eclectic, and altogether unnerving, series of narratives. The stories tend to vary in quality (presumably due to authorship), though overall the level is quite high. I suppose that's really all that steals the perfect score from Rasskazy- the inconsistency. For every superb and technically brilliant piece (the opener in particular comes to mind), there are one or two others that are a bit of a slog by comparison, which for short fiction is never ideal.
Overall, though, great stuff. Several of these writers will be on my radar for the foreseeable future.
Overall, though, great stuff. Several of these writers will be on my radar for the foreseeable future.
October 29, 2009
I won this on first-reads.
I like that this book gives someone who has never been to Russia an idea of what it is like there. I really appreciated that there were different authors compiled in this book to give a range of views and topics to examine.
I like that this book gives someone who has never been to Russia an idea of what it is like there. I really appreciated that there were different authors compiled in this book to give a range of views and topics to examine.
May 20, 2010
Just finished reading Rasskazy. It is a book of short stories from current Russian writers. There's some dark stuff in here but also some stuff that is pretty good. It is a good way to check out what Russia feels like these days.
March 27, 2011
I was able to read all but one story and that one was like reading a literal translation of an original Latin text by someone who did not understand that there were no punctuations in ancient Rome and has decided not to do so with the translation.
The remaining stories are well worth the time.
The remaining stories are well worth the time.
March 27, 2010
There were some really excellent stories in this, but there were a couple of duds, as well.
December 23, 2009
An interesting, if very uneven, collection of stories by modern Russian writers. Many of the stories were worth the time, just as many got 2 pages and then skipped over.
January 12, 2012
Stories from the new Russia. It was so depressing I couldn't finish it.
June 5, 2011
Most of these stories stumble over the fine line between existential and pointless. Couldn't finish the book.
July 26, 2012
Good stories. I picked this up at ALA, but it is really only a sampler. I need to find the whole book and read the rest of them.
(abbreviated advanced reader's copy)
(abbreviated advanced reader's copy)
March 31, 2015
Incredible post-Soviet writing that is unlike anything else...
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews