'Thrillingly strange . . . Brilliantly disturbing . . . proves that the literary tradition that produced Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Babel is alive and well'
The Daily Beast

In these blackly comic stories of revenge, disturbing deaths, midnight forests, magic and haunting melancholy, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya blends miracles and madness in the darkest of modern fairy tales.

'One of Russia's best living writers . . . her tales inhabit a borderline between this world and the next'
The New York Times

'As astringent as witch hazel, as poetic as your finest private passing moments . . . If there's any justice, this humble paperback will be greeted as the pinnacle of modern literature that it is'
Elle

Selected and translated by KEITH GESSEN and ANNA SUMMERS