Glas 22, 240 pages
ISBN 5-7172-0048-X

"Personal Russian melodramas unfold amid major historic ones in Muravyova's collection of one novella and two short stories. In the title story, beautiful Lydia is a young mother whose love for another man brings tragedy. Dreamily recalled by a distant relative, the melancholy tale takes place during the Revolution which 'started with half-educated youths still wet behind the ears taking exception to the world around them — youths with no soul who had never really experienced anything in their snivelling lives.' A member of the bourgeoisie, Lydia is at first repressed by, then targeted for, her social status.

A shorter tale 'Lala, Natasha, Toma' follows a similar vein: three vivacious upper-class women must reconsider their dreams and purposes after the Revolution. Ironically, Toma who is best able to adapt to the new social order pays most dearly for her effort.

'Philemon and Baucis' is a brilliant, unsettling domestic tale with the mythical characters transposed into Vanya and Zhenya, an elderly couple enjoying their twilight years at their summer cottage. The couple met when Zhenya was a prisoner in one of Stalin's labor camps where Vanya was a commanding officer. Their daughter Tatyana, a single mother, behaves strangely: 'unbalanced by her maternal instincts,' she force-feeds her three-year-old daughter 'like a guinea pig in some bizarre experiment.' An unexpected plot twist makes the story unforgettable. Already a recognized talent in Russian literature, Muravyova should garner praise among English-language readers with this brisk and dynamic work." — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"The Nomadic Soul is a richly suggestive blend of prose and poetry, tirelessly jumping back and forth in time and place and begging multifold connections with the present that remains poignantly unclarified. The story is told from a wide variety of perspectives and largely through dialogue, with the speakers' identity withheld often until the last moment. Muravyova revels in this at times bewildering polyphony.Here, as elsewhere, Muravyova shows her considerable talent at refashioning staples of the Russian tradition with verve and ingenuity." — The Moscow Times

"Irina Muravyova is one of the finest Russian women authors today. Her prose is poetic and precise, always on the lookout for the precious grains of love and kindness in a hostile world. Her prose tends to poetry, it is marked with dignity and faith in her unfortunate homeland." — Russkaya Mysl

"...an aspiring talent emerging from the recent group of emigre Russian writers." — World Literature Today

Irina Muravyova, born in 1952 in Moscow, is a philologist by training. She is a Pushkin scholar and translates poetry from English and German. In 1985 she emigrated to the USA and currently lives in Boston.

Irina Muravyova's has also written a number of short stories, and novels published in the major literary journals. Her books include On the Edge, The Curly-headed Lieutenant, Phylemon and Baucis, Natalya's Diary, Shooting a Documentary, and Altoviti's Portrait.

Her precise and poetic stories explore the impact of Russian history on the lives of ordinary people. The Revolution and Civil War, the purges of the 1930s, and two world wars still resound in the struggles of present-day Russians in a vastly changed society.