Magadan, in the far northeast of Russia: in nine interconnected stories, Kseniya Melnik captures life on the periphery. Kseniya Melnik's poignant and sensitive stories tell of eighteen-year-old Olga, for example, who, disappointed by love, trades the warm southern city of Stavropol for the icy winds of Magadan; of a pensioner in American exile who, after receiving an unexpected call from his former best friend, lies to himself about their shared past; and of Sonja, whose grandfather confides in her the story of a dangerous friendship with an ostracized singer that could have landed him in prison. And of Tanja, who at the end of the 1970s plays with the appealing possibility of having a fling with an Italian soccer player while passing through Moscow - and, faced with the unexpected possibility of being able to bring her family something as exotic as bananas, misses the rendezvous by standing in line. In another story, little Alina, who is taken to a questionable healer because of her frequent migraines, realizes that not everything is as it seems - and that the supposedly evil witch is also just boiling water.

Kseniya Melnik makes it palpable how much the place of our origins shapes us and at the same time how little human longings are tied to a specific place. Shifting between ironic distance and compassionate sympathy for her characters, she captures those moments of life in which beauty, joie de vivre and hope unexpectedly blossom. Magadan may be in Russia's Far East, but its inhabitants could be our neighbors.