“Natasha and Other Stories” - the first book of the writer and director D. Bezmozgis (1973), who immigrated at the age of six with his family from Riga to Canada, was named the best first book, one of the twenty-five best books of the year, etc. etc. And according to the 2010 New Yorker list, Bezmozgis was among the twenty best writers under forty. Critics saw in Bezmozgis the heir to Babel, Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud. In this small collection, which tells how difficult it was for Soviet Jews to adapt to life in a country so different from the USSR, drama and even tragedy - in the spirit of its predecessors - coexist with comedy.