Leonid Dobychin, once obscure, is now celebrated as a modernist master. His short stories are hailed as a Soviet version of those in James Joyce's Dubliners - subtle and tightly constructed miniatures, linked by recurring themes and motifs, in which meaning is generated by ironic juxtaposition, context, allusion, and nuances of structure and style. This collection includes all of the stories published in Dobychin's lifetime, plus two stories that remained unpublished until the late 1980s.<BR>For Dobychin, early Soviet society was an absurdist wonderland. He was not anti-Soviet but trans-Soviet, practicing realism but looking at reality from jarring angles that expose the neophyte Soviet culture. A typical Dobychin hero participates in character-building sports, witnesses a funeral procession, watches a parade, attends the unveiling of a monument to a fallen Communist - and finally reflects at the end of the day that he almost met a pretty young nurse.