The Body of the Soul

A new collection of stories by the acclaimed Ludmila Ulitskaya, masterfully translated into English

While we can feel, know, and study the body, the soul refuses definition. Where does it begin and end? What does the soul have to do with love? Does it exist at all, and if so, does it outlast the body? Or are the soul and body really one and the same?

These are questions posed by the characters who inhabit this book of stories by the award-winning Russian writer Ludmila Ulitskaya. A woman believes that the best way to control her life is to control her death. A landscape photographer suffering from a debilitating illness wonders if the beauty he has witnessed can triumph over decay. A coroner dedicated to science is confronted by a startling physical anomaly, a lonely widow experiences an extraordinary transformation, a written prayer from their deceased mother ignites a connection between estranged sisters.

In these eleven stories, artfully rendered into English by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Ulitskaya maps the edges of our lives, tracing a delicate geography of the soul.