The cycle of stories “Requiems” initiates the reader into the problem of death as a separate, independent subject of artistic depiction. At the same time, the concept of death is considered by L. Petrushevskaya in a variety of manifestations. This is the death of marital love (“I love you”), and the collapse of the bright hopes of youth, the loss of optimism in life (“Jewish Verochka”), and the dying of the soul, spiritual degradation (“The Lady with the Dogs”), and the loss of compassion for someone else’s misfortune (“ Who will answer?)

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. Requiems. Publishing house "Vagrius". Moscow. 2001