Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself

LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA was born in 1938 in Moscow, where she still lives. She is the author of more than fifteen volumes of prose, including the New York Times bestseller There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales (2009), which won a World Fantasy Award and was one of New York magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year and one of NPR’s Five Best Works of Foreign Fiction. Earlier works include the short novel The Time: Night (1992), which was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize, and “Svoi Krug” (1988; “Among Friends”), a modern classic about the late-Soviet intelligentsia. A singular force in modern Russian fiction, she is also a playwright whose work has been staged by leading theater companies all over the world. In 2002 she received Russia’s most prestigious prize, the Triumph, for lifetime achievement.

ANNA SUMMERS is the coeditor and cotranslator of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales and the literary editor of The Baffler . Born and raised in Moscow, she now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Deeply unromantic love stories told frankly, with an elasticity and economy of language … dark, fatalistic humor and bone-deep irony.”

“This gem’s exquisite conjugation of doom and disconnect is so depressingly convincing that I laughed out loud…. On par with the work of such horror maestros as Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Petrushevskaya writes instant classics…. These, as the title proclaims, are love stories, scored to a totalitarian track that makes the mystery of love ever more murky.”

“Combines the brevity of Lydia Davis with the familial strangleholds of Chekhov. They’re short and brutal, but often elegant in their economy.”

“Full of off-kilter, lurid, even violent attempts at connection.”

“Heartbreaking, but … also beautiful and touching in describing how, if not love, at least companionship, can save the most lost souls.”

“An important writer … Russia’s best-known … She’s a much better storyteller than her American counterparts in the seedy surreal…. Petrushevskaya’s stories should remind her readers of our own follies, illusions and tenderness.”

“Dark and mischievous … [Petrushevskaya’s] stories never flinch from harshness, yet also offer odd redemptions … comedic brilliance … microscopic precision … several inimitable, laugh-out-loud paragraphs … creepy early-Ian-McEwan style identity disintegrations [and a] formidable way with a character profile…. [The translation, by] Anna Summers, [is] starkly elegant, often wry…. Summers also provides a sensitive, informative and insightful introduction…. Petrushevskaya … ensures herself a place high in the roster of unsettling Writers of the Weird.”

“Both supremely gritty and realistically life-affirming … Full of meaningful, finely crafted detail.”

“Think Chekhov writing from a female perspective…. Petrushevskaya’s short stories transform the mundane into the near surreal, pausing only to wink at the absurdity of it all.”

“The fact that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is Russia’s premier writer of fiction today proves that the literary tradition that produced Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Babel is alive and well.”

“Her witchy magic foments an unsettling brew of conscience and consequences.”

“One of the greatest writers in Russia today and a vital force in contemporary world literature.”

“A master of the short story form, a kindred spirit to writers like Angela Carter and Yumiko Kurahashi.”

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright © Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, 2013 Translation and introduction copyright © Anna Summers, 2013 All rights reserved

“Milgrom” was translated by Anna Summers and Keith Gessen. It first appeared on the Words Without Borders website.

“Give Her to Me” first appeared in The Baffler; “The Goddess Parka” in Playboy; “Hallelujah, Family” in Zoetrope; and “The Wild Berries” in The Paris Review.

The stories in this collection were published in Russian in Neva, Octyabr, Aurora, Znamya, Novyi mir, and Literaturnaya gazeta.

These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Petrushevskaia, Liudmila. [Short stories. English. Selections. 2013] There once lived a girl who seduced her sister’s husband, and he hanged himself : love stories / Ludmilla Petrushevskaya ; selected and translated with an introduction by Anna Summers. pages ; cm

ISBN 978-1-101-60298-0

1. Petrushevskaia, Liudmila—Translations into English. I. Summers, Anna, translator. II. Title.

PG3485.E724A2 2013 891.73'44—dc23 2012029559

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