Longing for the Outskirts

An audio course about growing up. Five episodes of initiation—from a girl to a teenager, to a very young woman, and to an almost ex-wife.

Five stories from the life of a girl—girl-turned-woman. “And no pink childhood” in poor provincial life at the beginning of the 2000s; teenage experiments with unrequited love and love without answer; moving to the capital; the first job and the first marriage… As a child, the main character dreams of how someday she’ll grow up and become happy—yet growing up turns into disappointment, expectations are far from reality, and the hated outskirts, her home and childhood become the only place she can truly miss.

“ The author constantly refers to classics—and at the same time puts it on a spit.” — Elena Vasilieva, “Reading”

“Longing for the outskirts” is prose of a generation.

This is literature of the inner world, not of external circumstances. Sopikova sets the wheels of time in motion—page by page, the book’s characters grow, and barely noticeable but impossible to miss signs of the era appear: the nineties, the 2000s, the 2010s… Everything we remember so well. And the characters whom it’s hard not to associate with yourself. Tatyana Solovyeva, “Youth”