Mikhail Epstein, Sergey Yuryenen, "Climaxes. On the Vicissitudes of Life." Moscow: NLO, 2024

It's difficult to pinpoint the genre of this book: memoirs? Sketches? Excerpts? Literary scholar Mikhail Epshteyn and writer Sergei Yuryenen have jointly published a collection of autobiographical short stories, each of which reveals a different scale—from the realization of life's predetermination to the awkward episode of a chance encounter. Compositionally, they are arranged into nearly a hundred stories, told by the authors one by one: the climax of loneliness, the climax of seduction, the climax of gratitude, and even the climax of faith in the state. Recognizing each one and snapping your fingers: "It's true!" is pure reading pleasure.
"How strange it is to feel the dusty deposits of centuries right under my skin! Where are you from? I was born in Atlantis. I was born in Byzantium. I was born in the USSR... Exotic words—echoes of already silent historical worlds..."

