For the past thirty years, Alice Munro has been called the world’s best author of short stories, but Russian readers have only been able to get her books now—after the writer received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Critics constantly compare Munro to Chekhov, and this comparison isn’t unfounded: like the Russian writer, she knows how to tell a story so that readers—even those belonging to a completely different culture—recognize themselves in the characters. Restraint, democratic spirit, truthfulness, understanding the subtlest shades of women’s psychology, and the ability to evoke deep emotional shocks—these are the hallmarks of the great writer’s style.