familial love or between strangers, carnal or platonic, real or imagined) central in the lives of their characters. Although all the authors represented were born in the Soviet period, each was molded by a particular set of shared practices and beliefs, and all offer a distinctive perspective on their experience. The selections are evenly divided between men and women writers and those working in Russia or abroad. This anthology is anchored in the period from the middle of the twentieth century to the present, offering the reader an insider’s view of Soviet and post-Soviet life. Yet the writer’s position – sometimes from within that time, sometimes from the perspective of a backward glance at the past – is emphatically that of an outsider.

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