Olesya Kuprin’s amazingly warm and gentle prose will take you in an instant from the hustle and bustle of the present to the sun-hot porch of a house with a blue door, behind which they are slowly setting the table, cutting vegetables into large pieces for salad, waiting for a sponge cake from the oven, where the southern roast the sun nourishes the sweetest tomatoes in the world, where the hands of your beloved Ba stroke your head. Amazingly sensitive stories by your favorite author are now under one cover.

Drawings by Evgenia Karpovich@_barinya_Recipe editor Anna Evtushenko