Ings and Oughts

From a rising star of ＂inventive and wildly evocative＂ Russian literature (Publishers Weekly), a collection of short stories that straddles the line between delight and horror.

Twisting the art of the fairytale into something entirely her own, Alla Gorbunova’s (Th)ings and (Th)oughts is a spellbinding collection of thematically-linked short prose. A teacher contemplates leaving her husband after learning that he doesn’t have a soul; a functionary realizes that the only way to survive in contemporary Russia is to go insane; cars fall inexplicably from the sky; skeletons turn up in abandoned lots; a hapless everyman named Ivan Petrovich travels through a madcap Boschian afterlife, coming face-to-face with his own shortcomings, but failing, time after time, to finally get it right. Elsewhere, characters contend with puns, predators, and polyamory, often finding that the bleakness of their existence is an ordeal that only love can sweeten-though it also can’t fix anything.

A witty satirist with a post-apocalyptic vision and a theologian’s sense of seriousness and depth, Gorbunova is heir to the likes of Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Daniil Kharms. In these fantastic, parable-like tales, she restores fiction’s capacity to amuse, terrify, and enchant, turning a magical lens on bitter realities.

Alla Gorbunova was born in Leningrad in 1985 and studied philosophy at St. Petersburg State University. She is a poet and the author of several books of prose. Her book, It’s the End of the World, My Love, became Russia’s most discussed literary publication in 2020 and received The New Literature Prize 2020.