The stories included in Dmitry Bykov's new collection, 'The Majority,' create a fantastical and distorted world. One reality breaks through another: 'there are unmotivated trips on night express trains and intercity buses, meetings arranged by unknown parties, devotions to secret cults, the gathering of information for non-existent or secret states. Stars, always stars, aligning in unfamiliar configurations.' Here, the characters are intertwined: Pobedonostsev quotes Bulgakov to Dostoevsky, Harry Potter is invited to the Scientific Research Institute of the History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and the Lady with the Dog impresses Gurov with her practicality and cynicism. Here, times are confused: the past is replayed and unrecognizable in the new production, the present is overgrown with fictitious stories, and attempts are made to change the future by traveling backwards. Even geography rebels here: the living Neglinka River is hidden underground, and the dead rise from the earth. And it's no longer possible to hide from life in art: it's poisoned by it and turned inside out.

Such is the world after February 24th. But 'paradise is the possibility of imagining another life.' It's yet to be discovered, and each story in 'The Majority' is not only an expression of despair but also a step toward finding that reality.