Step inside the story – explore a selection of powerful chapters from the books.
Rushing from Canada to Moscow to visit Dad in intensive care — unrecognizable after just a month. Hiding shock behind forced stupid jokes. The storyteller in a spacesuit trying to trick death. Collapsing into a stranger’s arms. The sterile air, skeletal hand, Mom’s silent vigil—none of it feels real. Only the guilt remains: fear of the body that used
A movie about Dad through his music is made —Simon & Garfunkel to Piazzolla, Vertinsky to Zaz. His soundtrack echoes across generations. The daughter reminisces about the music they loved - songs that shaped her taste and funny stories about mispronounced lyrics and kindergarten runaways.
Just a second date—sitting in his car, facing each other, his beauty lit by the glow of the headlights. He looks like one of Michelangelo’s marble statues—a pure, ideal masculine body, the kind we were shown at school as the standard of perfection. Finally found in real life. The rush of first love, driven by hormones and attraction, will eventually …
A girl raised as royalty chafes against inherited privilege—both her family’s Soviet-era prestige and the psychological borders they imposed. Between silver tiaras and the allure of escape, she dissects what true sovereignty costs: rebellion or complicity?
is a heartbreaking yet darkly humorous memoir about a daughter who immigrated to Canada to separate from her parents – only to rush back to Moscow when her father’s cancer demands a desperate rescue: her bone marrow. Trapped in the sterile limbo of hospital days, she reminisces about his role in her life, clinging to their bittersweet jokes and conversations while carrying a secret too heavy to confess. With unflinching honesty, the book chronicles the chaos of a terminal diagnosis, the exhausting battle with mental health issues, and the scars of immigration. This healing story offers solace and solidarity for those who’ve lost loved ones to cancer, faced immigration struggles and battled mental health in silence.
12.04.2025
A movie about Dad through his music is made —Simon & Garfunkel to Piazzolla, Vertinsky to Zaz. His soundtrack echoes across generations. The daughter reminisces about the music they loved - songs that shaped her taste and funny stories about mispronounced lyrics and kindergarten runaways.
The village church overflows with mourners as the narrator confronts the crushing weight of her father’s absence. This is his legacy: a life spent collecting both rare treasures and fractured souls, now reduced to silent artifacts and unanswered questions. What is now left? His cluttered office, his unfinished plans, and her mother’s clenched fists in an echoing, empty house.
They tiptoe around the word 'coma,' draping it in euphemisms. They say: 'He’s sleeping' - shared incantation against the unbearable. A mother moves into a small room near the ICU. Her world shrinks to hospital halls and the sound of church bells. Fall turns to winter unnoticed. We know - dad may never wake. Faith remains.
She lingers in grief’s bargaining stage, refusing to believe her father is truly gone. A desperate self-deception: her mind pretending this is just another game of hide-and-seek, that any moment now he’ll reappear with a laugh and open arms.
Rushing from Canada to Moscow to visit Dad in intensive care — unrecognizable after just a month. Hiding shock behind forced stupid jokes. The storyteller in a spacesuit trying to trick death. Collapsing into a stranger’s arms. The sterile air, skeletal hand, Mom’s silent vigil—none of it feels real. Only the guilt remains: fear of the body that used to...
A stopover in Istanbul, a walk along cobblestone streets, Turkish cats - heirs of great Constantinople, Dad’s guidance, Turkish coffee causing a terrible headache, humiliation of women, the injustice of the whole world — and it all ended at the police station.
This darkly comedic memoir follows the journey of a privileged Russian immigrant who trades her luxury life for a one-way ticket to Canada. Sheltered like a princess in a parental castle, she crashes headfirst into reality: minimum-wage jobs, pandemic isolation without friends and the crushing discovery of her undiagnosed mental illness. With brutal self-irony and unexpected humor, she chronicles her growing up at 35 – from scrubbing toilets to earning a master’s degree while battling her own mind. A healing story for immigrants who traded comfort for freedom and privileged souls facing real-world survival; and for locals who want to understand the unfiltered immigrant experience, complete with cultural clashes and silent judgments.
12.04.2025
What do we all reminisce about on New Year’s Eve? If we focus on the good, then good will happen. Being a manager and building a team that laughs together, hotel stories best left untold, quiet holidays spent with family. Meeting J - who embodies my dad’s patients. And, like Hercules, ready for the labors ahead.
A girl raised as royalty chafes against inherited privilege—both her family’s Soviet-era prestige and the psychological borders they imposed. Between silver tiaras and the allure of escape, she dissects what true sovereignty costs: rebellion or complicity?
She’s convinced she’s special - a student who came "temporarily" but secretly plans to stay. Yet there are thousands like her. And instead of triumph, she’s met with harsh reality: bureaucracy, job hunting, and a drug-addicted neighbor she has to share a bathroom with.
Collection of stories about a perfectly imperfect love couple where OCD obsessive precision and cleanliness collides with high peaks of bipolar spontaneity and chaos with equal parts wit, warmth, and disinfectant wipes.
25.06.2025
A simple task—measuring rice and water—spirals into pi-level math, proving how Eastern European instincts to expect the worst can turn even the easiest moments into mini survival drills. J with his Canadian politeness and European charm fixes it all.
New Year feels like a melting snowman losing its buttons. But there’s J to hold everything together and put back the buttons. New Year in Moscow full of family and funny traditions - is dearly missed while living as an immigrant in Canada. New Year here is too quiet. The kids are both adored and maddening. J is becoming a...
Just a second date—sitting in his car, facing each other, his beauty lit by the glow of the headlights. He looks like one of Michelangelo’s marble statues—a pure, ideal masculine body, the kind we were shown at school as the standard of perfection. Finally found in real life. The rush of first love, driven by hormones and attraction, will eventually...
This book is about different terminations. About what must — or is forced — to end: monarchies draining their countries dry; unwanted pregnancies when parents realize they can’t fulfill their obligations to a new life; and existence where emotions grow so unbearable that only death stops the pain. At the very moment her mother terminates a pregnancy, the daughter contemplates terminating her own life – all against the backdrop of King Charles’s visit to Canada, as the nation debates severing the dynastic chain. An unflinching exploration of abortions, suicide, and archaic systems of power.
15.07.2025
Khibiny Mountains, eerie industrial ruins, Orthodox monasteries, snow villages, and abandoned factories, or race snowmobiles through frozen valleys. Kirovsk offers …
The Curonian Spit, in the Kaliningrad Region, is a good place to have a relaxed, peaceful and inexpensive beachside vacation.
Dombai is one of the most popular ski resorts in the Caucasus. The Dombai mountains are located in Karachay-Cherkessia, at …
Love is… A quest for a bug zapper while the beloved is frozen in terror - insects all over the …
A love story without bars, alcohol, no drunken kisses, no drama-fueled nights or sleepovers — just two very unusual people …
Immigrant Longing: When a Stranger’s Mother Feels Like Home. J brings his spectacular mother to Starbucks, a desperate hug blurs …
A marketplace purchase spirals into a surreal encounter with three strange men, a house of fake Klimt paintings and gaudy …
Immigrant Longing: When a Stranger’s Mother Feels Like Home. J brings his spectacular mother to Starbucks, a desperate hug blurs …
Love is… A quest for a bug zapper while the beloved is frozen in terror - insects all over the …
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both truth and art
Vladimir Nabokov
English
