Zlom – Tokarevová Viktoria (2016)

Unrequited love, but also the vision of better tomorrows, love that also has room for pain, mistakes, and misunderstandings – these are all themes in the book collection of short stories by Russian writer Viktoria Tokareva (* 1937). In her realistically psychological works, which have already become part of the fund of classic Russian literature of the twentieth century, there is no shortage of humor and irony, love and death, surprising twists, and above all, space for analyzing the conflicting relationships between men and women. In each of the five stories, the author's literary characters grapple with everyday problems, worries, and joys of daily life. However, the plots do not overflow with tiresome sentimentality, as might seem at first glance – often, love appears unadorned, sometimes shifting from the grotesque to chilling seriousness, balancing on the edge of the tragic and the ridiculous. The author often leaves the end of the story open, abandoning her heroes at a crossroads before a difficult life choice, thus giving the reader space for their own interpretation of the characters and their fates. The stories also carry a critical subtext sharply commenting on the period of the waning Soviet perestroika. In all of this lies the secret of her reading success across generations. – The book is published by...