Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Other Stories Audiobook (Free)

The first English-language collection of a contemporary Russian professional of the short story, that has been profiled in the brand new Yorker

Maxim Osipov, who lives and practices medicine within a town ninety miles outside Moscow, is one of Russia’s best contemporary authors. In the tradition of Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams, he pulls on his experiences in medicine to write tales of great subtlety and striking understanding. Osipov’s fiction presents a nuanced, collage-like portrait of life in provincial Russia-its tragedies, frustrations, and moments of humble beauty and inspiration. The twelve tales in this quantity depict doctors, actors, screenwriters, teachers, entrepreneurs, local political bosses, and common scammers whose pathways intersect in unstable yet entirely natural methods: in sickrooms, classrooms, administrative offices, and on trains and in planes. Their encounters lead to disasters, main and minimal epiphanies, and-on occasion-the promise of redemption.