Stories from the magazine “Znamya” No. 5, 2009About the authorIrina Nikolaevna Polyanskaya (1952-2004) - prose writer, author of the novels “The Passage of a Shadow” (1997), “Reading Water” (1999), “Event Horizon” (2002), “How difficult it is to tear yourself away from mirrors” (2004), as well as novels and short stories. Laureate of the German literary prize “Lege Artis” (1995) and the magazine “New World” (1997). Finalist of the Booker Prize for 1998. Her stories were repeatedly published in the magazine “Znamya” (1990, No. 1; 1993, No. 5; 1994, No. 12; 2003, No. 1). The story “Iron and Ice Cream” received the Yuri Kazakov Prize as the best story of 2003.