Russian Stories

Drift through outer space with a doomed cosmonaut whose engine has cut out; return to an irradiated village with an elderly couple who want to go home; experience that sinking feeling common to all who visit Voromir, where graviatonal forces are 30 per cent higher than in the rest of the world; ask yourself, did Elvis really play a concert in Red Square? The ridiculous is rendered sublime in Francesc Seres' collection of twenty-one impish and outrageous stories by five imaginary Russian writers. Each story mines a discrete facet of Russian life, history or culture, and as a whole they sketch a historical arc that begins in the nineteenth century and ends in the age of budget airlines. Russian Stories is a virtuoso collection by a master of the genre, offering the reader a winning combination of daring, wit, dash and charm.