From the deceptively simple narratives Apple Cider Vinegar and Hurricane Bob to the surrealist story Dismemberers and the magical tales Jonah and Sarah and Lanskoy Road, the tempo fluctuates, but throughout, David Shrayer-Petrov seamlessly preserves familiar voices. The stories have a genuine feel of the setting and epochthe Russian stories work as narratives of everyday life, while the American stories offer an accurate sense of an emigre's alienation.

Like all good works of fiction, these stories take on a mythic quality and transcend time and place. Each carries and communicates...