The stories and essays in this volume-a follow-up to his debut in English, Rock, Paper, Scissors-tackle major questions of modern life in and beyond Russia with Osipov's trademark blend of daring and subtlety. Deceit, political pressure, ethnic discrimination, the urge to emigrate and the fear of abandoning one's home, as well as myriad generational debts and conflicts, are as complexly woven through these pieces as they are through the lives of Osipov's fellow Russians and through our own. What binds the prose in this volume is not only a set of concerns, however, but also Osipov's penetrating insights and fearless realism. "Dreams fall away, one after another," he writes in the opening essay, "some because they come true, but most because they prove pointless." Yet, as he reminds us in the final essay, when viewed from ground level, "life tends not towards depletion, towards zero, but, on the contrary, towards repletion, fullness."