Thirteen contemporary writers writing in Russian have created thirteen short stories about the customs and traditions in their cultures: diverse, yet nevertheless based on the same phenomena and processes. Coming of age (for example, through a computer game, as in Dasha Blagova's story), choosing a profession (becoming a shepherd or a vlogger, as in Islam Khanipaev's text), marriage (between...

‘Diary’ is a chronicle of the psychological breakdown of the country. The time of overturned destinies and burned-out feelings gives birth to a special literature, uncomfortable and disturbing. Here the author becomes general. Therefore, without a name, about everyone in the first person. ‘It's very difficult to write - everything is a stupor. Our current context adds to the senselessness - it...

Reading these poems and looking at these photographs, it feels like you've seen it all somewhere else. A small town no one dreams of visiting, with a train station and a bus stop. A fellow traveler with a bag of London bags packed by his wife. An apartment rental ad: a TV always by the window, a sofa, two armchairs against the wall. Little things that never seem important, but only they can...

The book ‘A soda machine with syrup and without’ by Uladzimir Nyaklyaev is a social novel that, through microstories of Minsk bohemia, tells us about History with a capital letter. In this History, there are many faces standing together in line for soda: Lee Harvey Oswald and Kim Khadeyev, dissidents and G.E.B.s, survivors of World War II and cold front fighters, the one who reported and who...