A new collection of adult fairy tales from New York Times-bestselling Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Russia's greatest living absurdist and surrealist writer. At first glance, the stories in The New Adventures of Helen seems simple, even child-like, but a deep reading reveals satire and darkness manifested through classic fairy tale tropes characteristically upended by Petrushevskaya. These "adult fairy tales" ask deep questions about gender, love, history, memory, and the future, taking place in times between history and the now. These stories, quirky but with a confident hopefulness the Brothers Grimm would never dream of, will inspire and provoke English-speaking readers across the globe.
Author
Ludmilla Stefanovna Petrushevskaya (Russian: Людмила Стефановна Петрушевская, Людмила Петрушевская) (born 26 May 1938) is a Russian writer, novelist and playwright. Her works include the novels The Time Night (1992) and The Number One, both short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize, and Immortal Love, a collection of short stories and monologues. Since the late 1980s her plays, stories and novels have been published in more than 30 languages. In 2003 she was awarded the Pushkin Prize in Russian literature by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Germany. She was awarded the Russian State Prize for arts (2004), the Stanislavsky Award (2005), and the Triumph Prize (2006).
