Yasha, Was This What You Wanted?

Historical times without ceremony—and often with cruelty—interfere in the course of human life. The 20th century was not merciful—with its world wars, revolutions, Nazism, the Holocaust, the GULAG, and the siege of Leningrad. But full of compassion and tenderness, the writer’s gaze pulls people and plots out of oblivion. Dina Rubina, with her all-encompassing humanism and deep understanding of human nature, sets the person and history against each other in a new collection of short prose, “Yasha, did you want this?” The conflict is sometimes tragic, and Dina Rubina places her heroes in a hopeless situation from which only a miracle can save them. And where is the miracle, you ask? It’s there. Love, family, and art—these are what Dina Rubina shows as capable of protecting a person from the iron march of time. The real miracles. Isn’t that so? With honed mastery and constant sensitivity to words, the author mixes sad and funny in her stories—just like in life itself.