Mom!!!

Anastasia Mironova (born 1984) is a prose writer and publicist. Her texts always spark sharp debate. She grew up in Tyumen, lived in London, then moved to St. Petersburg, and from there—into a village. She has been published in the journals “Znamya” and “Neva.” “Mom!!!” is her first book. It is not an autobiography, but a credible artistic fiction about children from Lesobaza, a working district of Tyumen.

What do you do if the birth of a new country caught you at five years old, living in the most terrible house of the city’s most terrible outskirts? Just close your eyes to fear and keep living: burying “little secrets,” teaching An’ka to read, being jealous of her for other girlfriends, playing “Chained Coppers,” waiting for your mother to return from work. Because Sasha still remembers life without Yeltsin, vouchers, and the new flag—but she can’t imagine life without her mother and without An’ka.

The 1990s. Five-year-old Sasha and her best friend An’ka begin their adult life on the outskirts of Tyumen called Lesobaza. The two of them stand in lines, cross the railway to go to school, save valuables from apartment thieves, and simply survive in a world that adults can’t manage. Denis Dragunsky