Rasskazy

Book excerpt: Few countries have undergone more radical transformations than Russia has since the fall of the Soviet Union. The stories in Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia present twenty-three 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. “What’s new is the rhythm and snap of the hip, modern, contemporary voices that we would expect to hear rattling into a cell phone in the booth next to ours, and the rendering of that voice into an English that’s as idiomatic and confident as we imagine these speakers to be. . . . How fortunate we are . . . that we now have Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia” —from the introduction by Francine Prose