Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (b. 1938) is a prose writer, poet, playwright, essayist, and author of fairy tales. It was printed in millions of copies, translated in different countries, it was awarded a dozen awards, literary, theatrical and even musical (starting with the State and “Triumph” and ending with the American “World Fantasy Award”, the World Fantasy Award, by the way, the only one in Russia). The book “How Much Women Know” is special. This is the first – and anniversary – Collected Works of the writer in one volume. Here are old things that have already become classics (early stories and the novel “Time is Night”), and new prose, plays and fairy tales. In the book, the reader will find Petrushevskaya’s most notorious texts, “Batted Pussies” (which are studied both in elementary grades and at universities), and alongside them are fairy tales and short stories about love. Everyday drama alternates here with chilling horror, and mysticism dominates reality, the prose sometimes sounds like free verse, and at the same time the reader will find truly funny texts. And this, of course, is not the Complete Works - but it was impossible to publish a one-volume book of several thousand pages... In general, surprises await the reader. The works of L. Petrushevskaya are included in the list of 100 books recommended for out-of-school reading. The author's punctuation is preserved in this edition.