The first Englishlanguage collection of a contemporary Russian master of the short story recenly profiled in The New Yorker Maxim Osipov who lives and practices medicine in a town ninety miles outside Moscow is one of Russias best contemporary writers. In the tradition of Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams he draws on his experiences in medicine to write stories of great subtlety and striking insight. Osipovs fiction presents a nuanced collagelike portrait of life in provincial Russia