For thirty years now, Alice Munro has been called the best author of short stories in the world, but her books are only coming to Russian readers now, after the writer received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Criticism constantly compares Munro to Chekhov, and this comparison is not without reason: like the Russian writer, she “outlines the contours of destinies or complex relationships with meager but miraculous strokes ... these are detailed portraits - with light shadows and deep perspective ...” (The Washington Post Book World).“In The Friend of My Youth, Munro gives full display of this rare talent,” wrote The New York Times Book Review. “Like Raymond Carver, she writes her characters in such a way that readers, even those belonging to a completely different culture, recognize themselves in the characters.”