Moscow Noir »

Natalia Smirnova was born in 1978 in Moscow. After studying law and working as a lawyer for a while, she moved to St. Petersburg to work for a publisher as a foreign rights manager. In 2006 together with Julia Goumen Natalia founded Goumen&Smirnova Literary Agency representing Russian authors worldwide. Julia Goumen was born in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1977. With a PhD in English, she has been working in publishing since 2001. After 3 years as a foreign rights manager she started an independent business as a literary agent. Since 2006 Julia Goumen runs Goumen&Smirnova Literary Agency together with Natalia Smirnova.

Moscow has been chomping at the bit to enter the Noir Series—with the intention of perpetrating extreme Russian menace.

Publishers Weekly

As literary agents Smirnova and Goumen note in their introduction to this excellent entry in Akashic's noir series, “A noir tradition does not yet really exist in Russia.” Still, they have managed to find 14 authors whose dark take on humanity would be familiar to the likes of Cornell Woolrich and Jim Thompson. Story after story offers haunting images: a husband interrupts his bludgeoning murder of his wife to sing their daughter back to sleep (Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's “In the New Development”); a cop eats an apple that fell from the shaven head of a drunken deputy chief detective just shot to death, who'd been playing William Tell (Alexander Anuchkin's “Field of a Thousand Corpses”). In Anna Starobinets's “The Mercy Bus,” a taut tale with a wicked bite, a con man poses as one of Moscow's walking wounded to make his getaway from a charity ball he engineered in order to rip off its patrons. This volume's strength bodes well for a second anthology from these able editors showcasing Russian talents. (June)

Contents

Introduction....................19
Anna Starobinets The Mercy Bus Kursk Station....................51
Vyacheslav Kuritsyn Gold and Heroin Leningradsky Avenue....................61
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya In the New Development Prazhskaya....................67
Andrei Khusnutdinov Wait Babushkinskaya....................103
Alexander Anuchkin Field of a Thousand Corpses Elk Island....................117
Vladimir Tuchkov Pure Ponds, Dirty Sex, or Two Army Buddies Meet Pure Ponds....................132
Igor Zotov Decameron Silver Pine Forest....................158
Gleb Shulpyakov The Doppelgänger Zamoskvorechye....................169
Maxim Maximov Daddy Loves Me Perovo....................185
Irina Denezhkina Christmas New Arbat....................197
Sergei Samsonov The Point of No Return Ostankino....................223
Dmitry Kosyrev (Master Chen) The Coat that Smelled Like Earth Birch Grove Park....................248
Alexei Evdokimov Europe after the Rain Kiev Station....................268
Sergei Kuznetsov Moscow Reincarnations Lubyanka....................296