The collection of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya includes her new stories and novellas, as well as works already known to readers. Petrushevskaya’s heroes are people we meet at work, ride the subway, live in the same building. Each of them is a whole world that fits into one story, and therefore each such story contains the dramatic and emotional charge of an entire novel. Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is the most traditional and most modern phenomenon in our current literature. It is traditional to the point of archaic and modern to the point of shock. The eternal and the momentary are connected in her work, like roots and leaves.