The Dalkey Archive Press
Russian Literature Series

For half of the twentieth century, there were two superpowers in the world and a gulf of silence between them. Our knowledge of Russian culture was based on propaganda and rumor, and their knowledge of us was no better. When the Soviet Union fell, Russians began to travel here more regularly, and what they discovered was a place very different from the America they'd imagined, but, at the same time, not exactly the one that we Americans think we know. This collection of beautifully written and entertaining literary essays by wide range of Russian writers--young and old, funny and somber, angry and celebratory, many being translated for the first time--offers U.S. readers a unique chance to "see ourselves as others see us," to perhaps question how the American dream stands up to the American reality, and to experience the wit and generosity of today's Russian writers.

From Amerika:

"The seventh America is deeply repulsive to me. This is the America of informers, hypocrites, bureaucrats, and lawyers. The America of legal wrangling and civil suits, in the course of which irresponsible idiot are awarded huge amounts of money from companies that don't provide special useful instructions about their products for irresponsible idiots. An America of spurious, deceitfully interpreted political correctness, offensive to all participants in the process of human society. This is the America where passerby will not even think of offering help to a person who is dying in the street, because they are afraid of being sued. I won't go on: it's boring and obnoxious to go through it all."

--Max Frai, "Nine and a Half Americas"