Kilometer 101

“Artfully conventional, Chekhovian collection of tales and essays.” —Peter Keough, The Arts Fuse

“The six successive short stories underscore the varieties and consequences of exile (physical and emotional) and the enduring nature of compassion amidst emigration and death… . The four autobiographical essays reiterate the struggles exposed in the short fictions. Throughout—in fiction or nonfiction—Osipov deftly combines illuminating insights of modern Russia with the poignancies of emigrating.” —Robert Allen Papinchak, World Literature Today

“Though Osipov centres Kilometer 101, his second collection of clear-eyed story-telling to appear in English on his former hometown in Russia, the book is at heart about flights and exile….The combination of sharp realism and understated refinement characteristic of Osipov’s prose beautifully conveys the ills, evils and anaesthetizing greyness symptomatic of life in provincial Russia, past and present…. It is impossible to read Kilometer 101 detached from the current political reality.“—Bryan Katetnyk, Financial Times

”… damning, and at times extremely funny… .[the] latest, brilliant collection of Osipov’s works.” —Francesca Peacock, The Spectator World

“Now is a difficult time to empathise with Russians – which is why we need Maxim Osipov. We need him to bring alive to us what it means to live in Putin’s Russia… .we need him to remind us of the kaleidoscope of qualities that a country like Russia inevitably contains – the humanity and generosity as well as the stupidity and cruelty… . when the world is deciding how to deal with the aftermath of Putin’s…defeat, I hope Kilometer 101 will be admitted in the Russian people’s defence.” —Charlotte Hobson, The Spectator (UK)

“By extending his self-deprecating tone to the mood of an entire country, the author succeeds at conveying the faded hopes of a generation.” —Publishers Weekly

Maxim Osipov (b. 1963) is a Russian writer and cardiologist. In the early 1990s, he was a research fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. Upon returning to Moscow, he continued to practice medicine and founded a publishing house specializing in medical, musical, and theological texts. In 2005, while working at a local hospital in Tarusa, a town ninety miles from Moscow, Osipov established a charitable foundation to ensure the hospital’s survival.

Since 2007, he has published short stories, novellas, essays, and plays, earning numerous literary awards for his fiction. He has published six collections of prose, and his plays have been staged throughout Russia. Osipov’s writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lived in Tarusa until February 2022 and now resides in Amsterdam.

Boris Dralyuk is a poet, translator, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the translator of Maxim Osipov’s Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories, Lev Ozerov’s Portraits Without Frames, and a co-translator of Pushkin’s Peter the Great’s African, all published by NYRB Classics.

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