Annotation: “I listened to O. in a trance. Compared to her intense, passion-driven life, my own felt colorless. I longed to be part of the storm she lived in every second — even if only on the margins.”

Oksana Vasyakina’s new book is a collection of eleven stories about women. Set in the 2000s and 2010s, these narratives follow their heroines as they drift through rented apartments, Indian hotels, and rooms in central Moscow — unafraid to take risks. The narrator watches as their lives repeatedly hang by a thread; at times she steps in, but she always remains slightly apart. Behind this distance lies a tense search for the source and nature of her own loneliness and sense of abandonment.

Oksana Vasyakina is a writer and the recipient of the Lyceum Prize (2019) and the NOS Prize (2021).