Fantastical stories

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour’s Baby

Indeed, with editors refusing to print her stories for fear of government censure, Petrushevskaya languished in obscurity until the fall of the USSR heralded her rise as a major force in modern Russian letters.

Though she is best known for grim, realist tales of Soviet life, often in the form of acidic female monologues, those are not what are on offer here. Subtitled Scary Fairy Tales, this volume collects the mystical and fantastical stories which Petrushevskaya has been writing throughout her life.