“They are deeply unromantic stories told frankly, with an elasticity and economy of language. What is consistent is the dark, fatalistic humor and bone-deep irony Petrushevskaya’s characters employ as protection against the biting cold of loneliness and misfortune that seems their birthright. They may not have the heart to throw the bastards out or lock the door against them, but these women hold the keys”. – New York Times Book Review

“This gem’s exquisite conjugation of doom and disconnect is so depressingly convincing that I laughed out loud”. – Elle magazine

★Rights sold to: USA,UK,Germany,Spain,Brazil,Denmark,Norway, Arabic, Israel,Romania and so on!
★By turns sly and sweet, burlesque and heartbreaking, these realist fables of women looking for love are the stories that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya – who has been compared to Chekhov, Tolstoy, Beckett, Poe, Angela Carter, and even Stephen King – is best known for in Russia.
★Complete English translation available!

This book is the selection of realistic short stories of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.
These “love stories, with a twist” follow the New York Times bestselling collection of her mystical short stories There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby. The publisher’s blurb says, “here are attempts at human connection, both depraved and sublime, by people across the life span: one-night stands in communal apartments, poignantly awkward couplings, office trysts, schoolgirl crushes, elopements, tentative courtships, and rampant infidelity, shot through with lurid violence, romantic illusion, and surprising tenderness.
With the satirical eye of Cindy Sherman, Petrushevskaya blends macabre spectacle with transformative moments of grace and shows just why she is Russia’s preeminent contemporary fiction writer”.

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was born in Moscow in 1938. Petrushevskaya studied journalism at Moscow State University, and began writing prose in the mid ‘60s. Her fi rst work was published in 1972, only to be followed by almost ten years of offi cially enforced silence, when the publication of her plays and prose was forbidden. At that time Petrushevskaya earned her living by working as a radio and television journalist and contributing to newspapers and literary Magazines. When her somber and disturbing absurdist plays were fi nally staged, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya became widely recognized as one of Russia’s fi nest dramatists.

　　A collection of short stories and monologues, Immortal Love, was published in 1988 and met with stunning success among readers and critics alike. In 1992 Petrushevskaya’s novel The Time is Night was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize; it was translated into more than 30 languages and included in college courses as one of the most important novels of the 20th century. Since then, Petrushevskaya has published over 30 books of prose. Today, award-winning plays by Petrushevskaya are produced around the world, while her prose pieces have been published in more than 30 countries. Ludmila Petrushevskaya is considered to be the only indisputably canonical writer currently at work in Russia today.

　　In 1991, Petrushevskaya was awarded the Pushkin Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Germany. She has also received prizes from the leading literary journals in Russia. Petrushevskaya’s novels The Time is Night and Number One… were short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize. In 2002, Petrushevskaya received Russia’s most prestigious prize, The Triumph, for lifetime achievement. Petrushevskaya’s play BIFEM was awarded the first prize at the New Drama Festival in 2003. In 2003 Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was awarded the State Prize of Russian Federation. The World Fantasy Award was received in 2010 for the short stories collection published by Penguin in USA.

“One of the finest living Russian writers… Her signature black humor and matter-of- fact prose result in an insightful and sympathetic portrait of a family in crisis”. – Publishers Weekly

“Petrushevskaya is a strikingly original author”.– The Guardian

“Told in an intimate, loose, over-the-backfence style, this is an alternately funny and desperate book – a welcome introduction
to a strong talent”. – Kirkus Review

“Thrillingly strange…Brilliantly disturbing… proves that the literary tradition that produces Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Babel is alive and well”. – Th e Daily Beast

“The writing is beautifully controlled and the spirit large… She deserves a wide readership”. – TLS

“A wonderfully talented and significant writer”. – John Bayley

"The auras of Samuel Beckett and the baleful Albanian magic realist Ismail Kadare blend in Petrushevskaya’s work”. - Booklist, starred review