OUT VISITING AND BACK HOME: Russian Stories on Aging

A theme anthology of 11 stories by 10 writers, including familiar names (Vasily Shukshin, Tatyana Tolstaya), as well as newcomers to English translation (Denis Dragunsky, Ludmila Ulitskaya). Absorbing perspectives on a society that, essentially, ignores and discards its elderly are presented with impressive variety, especially in Nina Katerli's ""Profitted Land"" (about the double affliction of being aged and Jewish); Vladimir Makanin's self-reflexive and very amusing ""One Old Man""; and, most memorably, Vasily Belov's ""The Burial Ground,"" in which a boy's visit to a village cemetery dominated by women's graves teaches him that his townsmen are fated to work, fight--and die--far from home.