(TH)INGS AND (TH)OUGHTS

A short story collection that balances the absurd and the tragic, from Russian writer Gorbunova.

There’s a resoundingly bleak quality to many of the stories here, beginning with the first, “Psychoanalysis in Hell,” written in the form of a memo. Gorbunova (and translator Alter) favor declarative openings, as in “The Insect Priest”: “There once was a village where the priest was really an insect, but the congregation had no idea.” Several stories explore the concept of doubles and doppelgängers, while “A Russian Prophet,” about the misfortunes of a character whose name—Pavel—is his only constant, heads into overtly metafictional territory. Some tales have a melancholy aspect, as in “The Children of the City of Novostradov,” where a shared delusion about Y2K gradually ebbs from a town’s population, leaving the community without anything distinctive about them. Most of the stories are very short and stand on their own, though in the third section of the book, titled “The Trials of Ivan Petrovich,” Gorbunova returns to a recurring character who, in different installments, encounters a society based around a train station, a murderous theologian, and “female creatures with metal cylinders for heads.” And there’s a brief nod to contemporary Russian politics as well, in “The Case of Tshaveliev.” These stories pack a heady punch, and they reveal a wider emotional range than one might expect.

These surreal fables feel at once timeless and urgently contemporary.