"The best novel of the year, its wisdom and talent far surpassing contemporary Russian prose, if I may be so bold. This novel is delicately written, full of humor, sometimes chilling, sometimes captivating, and from a playwright's perspective, it is precise and insightful." Dmitry Bykov (a Russian national award-winning author and top critic, winner of the Russian National Bestseller Award and the Big Book Award, author of biographies of Pasternak, Okudova, and Gorky)

“A classic example of a Cold War soap opera. The Soviet Union…whether bipolar or multipolar, it was still a man's world. Petrushevskaya tells us that people were still just schemers and ambitious men, taking what they wanted and whomever they wanted. Such a brutal and sobering truth is not incompatible with a happy ending.” — — NYRB

“The book is full of biting satire on the corruption of late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. This unconventional and absurd work will keep the reader guessing until the very end.” — *Publishers Weekly*

"What is the unique charm of Petrushevskaya's novels?... It lies in the author's use of unusual 'optical principles.' Through a 'crystal,' she simultaneously sees all the protagonist's purity, filth, joy, pain, pleasure, love, hatred, life, and death." — Russian critic Alexander Mikhailov

"This novel has a grand scope—in Petrushevskaya's world, there are no boundaries between important and minor events, main and minor characters; each character is measured by the scale of fate, and the light of the universe flows equally upon everyone." — colta.ru

"This is a highly creative work, an ode to building a family according to one's own will, regardless of the form that family takes." — Foreword Reviews

★This is a systemic theft of life. The thieves are mothers, doctors, officials—everyone who makes choices between the system and personal desires. They steal the child's bloodline, steal the mother's identity, steal the truth of a family, and ultimately steal the answer to "Who am I?" for an entire generation.

★Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, recipient of the "Contemporary Chekhov" and the "Great Book Prize" Lifetime Achievement Award, dissects the other side of love with surgical precision, writing this dark epic about guilt and complicity.

★With her "witch's" eye, Petrushevskaya shows us how individual destinies are easily manipulated beneath grand historical narratives; how evil is passed on and circulated in an environment of moral disorder.

★This is not only a story about maternal love and family, but also a mirror examining the ills of society, concerning existential dilemmas, identity anxiety, and the power of women trying to control their own destiny in the torrent of change.

★A rare long novel by Petrushevskaya, winning the New Literature Prize! Licensed for publication in Norway, Turkey, Denmark, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Arab countries!

★ Highly praised by *The New York Review of Books* and *Publishers Weekly*! Over 20,000 copies sold in Russia! Full English translation available!

This is a series of identity thefts and fateful transgressions! Centered on a baby-swapping incident in a maternity ward, it presents a grand panorama of the lives of people in that era. There's a promising college student whose pregnancy and childbirth fuel evil obsessions; a young diplomat who achieves social advancement through his wife, enjoying immense prestige but then stealing national wealth amidst the chaos; a highly respected hospital director who recklessly sells infants; a powerful prosecutor's wife who arbitrarily takes away children she desires; and a diplomat's wife who causes the death of others to achieve her own noble goals. Beneath each glamorous identity lies a hidden secret; each victim is also a criminal; and each person harmed is also harming others. Privileged classes, theft of national wealth, infant trafficking, and entrenched social classes—this book, from a female perspective, portrays the hardships of survival and the predicament of identity, highlighting the tragedy of all women's fates in that era, and re-examining the recurring problems in contemporary society [men, women, family, and society].

In the 1980s, 21-year-old Alina, a promising student at Moscow State University, was evicted from her home after her mother died of tuberculosis and her father remarried. Penniless, Alina began a relationship with a male classmate to secure her livelihood. However, an unplanned pregnancy left her abandoned at the hospital, forcing her to abandon her academic career. At the hospital, she met Masha, another expectant mother. Masha came from a wealthy family of diplomats, was a graduate of the Foreign Affairs Academy, and was happily anticipating her child's arrival, discussing life plans with her husband, Sergei, a diplomat about to be stationed abroad with his family.

Alina had planned to have her child adopted and then leave the hospital alone. Unexpectedly, Masha died during childbirth, while Alina gave birth to her own child. When she was left alone with two boys whose fates had diverged, jealousy fueled Alina's wicked thoughts. She inexplicably swapped the name bracelets engraved on the two babies.

In the days that followed, Alina was told by medical staff that "her son" had died of an infectious disease. However, she was the only one who knew her son was still alive because she had exchanged name bracelets. Unbeknownst to her, the child hadn't died as the hospital claimed; hospital administrators had already devised a plan to facilitate the sale of the baby. Even more dramatically, the person who came to buy the child was Yelena, the wife of a high-ranking prosecutor. She didn't want "Alina's child," so the hospital administrators shamelessly exchanged the two name bracelets again.

Masha's husband, Sergei, was devastated. A diplomat with no connections, only married couples were allowed to be stationed abroad. In a rush, he approached Alina and proposed that she impersonate his deceased wife and travel with him with the child. Alina, who always believed Sergei's son was her own, agreed and wanted to be a good mother. But she never imagined that her heartless husband would sexually abuse and commit domestic violence against her.

Masha's mother, Tamara, a former KGB lieutenant, accidentally learned that her grandson had been switched at birth. She tricked Yelena's mother into giving her the supposed "Masha's child" and hid him, raising him alone. Eventually, Yelena's mother died of guilt and mental breakdown. The two children grew up separately.

Diplomat Sergei died during a diplomatic mission, and the large amount of wealth he was escorting disappeared. Alina returned home with her children. When they returned to the old house where Sergei and Masha had lived, they found Tamara and the "Masha's child" there. That very night, Tamara unexpectedly fell ill and died. Alina and her two children were once again left alone in the room. Three years had passed, and everything seemed to have returned to square one. In the turbulent 1990s, she struggled to raise her two children without income or work. This intricate baby-swapping scandal altered the course of everyone's lives. Swept up in the tide of history, what fate awaited them...?

Petrashevskaya's unique handling of language imbues her characters with immense tension: a girl who uses pregnancy to blackmail her boyfriend; a father-in-law who expels newlyweds to prevent them from demanding power; a husband who uses a stranger to impersonate his wife for his own advancement; a maternity hospital worker who sells infants kept for adoption and records them as stillborn; a promising university student, a highly respected chief physician, the wife of a high-ranking prosecutor… Beneath each glamorous identity lies a hidden secret; each victim is also a criminal; each person who has been hurt is also hurting others. When love loses its soul, everyone harbors ulterior motives, and every relationship becomes impure. When the characters in the story sing praises of maternal love in the author's fictional universe, it is merely to conceal the crimes they have committed. The author feels compassion for each of them.

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
　　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. e World Fantasy Award was received in 2010 for the short stories collection published by Penguin in USA.
　　Her works have been translated into more than 30 languages ​​and distributed worldwide!