Surreal and witty, bitterly ironic, deadly serious and deeply moving by turns, Tony Rothman's Censored Tales capture something of the soul of Russia.
This is a world of paradox, inhumanity and, yes, miracles, where nothing is quite as it seems; for where freedom, information and the most basic of goods are in short supply, the certainties by which we lead our lives break down.
Foreign visitors duel with customs officers, knowing that each confiscated anit-Soviet book will be read many times; a ballet-lover lays siege to the Bolshoi for six years, waiting for the miracle that will get him a ticket; and a missing rocket part turns up as a corkscrew.
A story of Russians and Americans setting up a video film club and discovering fundamentallly different attitudes metamorphoses into a tales of marketeers, hunters of foreign husbands and stool pigeons.
And, as censors leave their scrawl on successive drafts, providing a jaundiced official gloss on the story, they too are subverted and compromised.
Other stories celebrate Russians' endurance in the face of the inhumanity of their daily existence.
In the most moving a foreign academic, subjected to a torrent of laughter from an elderly cloakroom attendant, follows her to find the cause of her anger--and returns humbled.
The tales are dedicated to glasnost, but it will take many more years of reform for the Russian which they describe to fade away.