From Japanese-born literary graduate Malcolm Bradbury, winner of the Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day, the first collection of short stories in his illustrious resume. These five amazing stories about the magical power of music and the gathering twilight are united not only thematically and metaphorically, but also by common characters, adding up to an exquisite large-scale canvas. Here, an unlucky saxophonist undergoes plastic surgery in the hope that this will get his career off the ground, a pop star sings serenades in Venice to his own wife, with whom he lived for decades, and a young cellist finds himself a highly original mentor... For the first time in Russian .

A delightful, artful book about how time passes and the sonorous notes that make its passage meaningful. Independenton Sunday These stories steal the key to your heart and settle there forever. Evening Standard Now it’s clear which This outstanding stylist set himself the task: no more, no less - to find a common, if not universal, denominator of the emotional experience that makes a person human. Nocturnes is a series of elegant, confident reflections on the fading of the senses, and in this way the collection is reminiscent of Ishiguro’s most famous book, The Remains of the Day. Surreal episodes bring to mind “The Inconsolable,” and deceptively simple variations on the theme of love and loss develop what was planned in “Never Let Me Go.” Times Five heartfelt dramas, each of which in its own way penetrates to the depths of the soul, not shying away from grotesque comedy at times. The attentive reader will be rewarded handsomely. Observer This book is akin to a song cycle with cross-cutting leitmotifs, and only a great composer could write it. The music still rings in your ears long after the Nocturnes are finished.Daily Telegraph