Before you is a collection of short prose about the Russian countryside and the lives of ordinary people. Sometimes the whimsical fate plays cruel games with the characters, just as it happens in real life: bright moments of happiness alternate with the bitterness of disappointment. The stories, written with love for rural life and attention to details, will carry readers to that very yard behind a wooden fence, where hay smells in the air and golden rays of the sun break through the green leaves of apple trees.
“In Marina Chufistova’s collection there are many droplets of sunshine—sometimes they truly are just little drops, like in spring falling from the roofs; sometimes they are a sunny whirlwind carrying you into someone else’s life full of joy and genuine sorrow.” — Alexandra Shalashova, writer and poetess.