Sitting by her window with a glass of cranberries in sugar syrup—bought from a woman at the market who assured her they came from Karelia—she muses, “Perhaps they have some other kind of effect when you eat them. Spiritual, maybe? So I eat and wait for the Karelian cranberries to work their magic on me.” Skarynkina is compelled to spend the last of her money on a trip to Krakow to meet Czesław Miłosz, but she never finds his address, so he remains to her an idol like Elvis Presley dressed in gold lamé. Each story has its own charm and imaginative flight.

Review
‘She writes as if penning a letter to a close friend—loosely, intimately, but never any less engagingly…’
— Alan Taylor ― The Herald

Country Life wrote of Skarynkina’s essays that they ‘exist at the very edge of what we can imagine.’
― Country Life

About the Author
Tania Skarynkina was born in 1969 in Smarhon, Belarus. She has worked as a mail carrier, journalist, and illustrator. She writes poetry in Russian and essays in Belarusian. Her works have been translated into English, Polish, Czech, and Hebrew. Her collection of short stories, *A Large Czesław Miłosz with a Dash of Elvis Presley*, won the English PEN Award in 2018.

Jim Dingley is a respected translator and expert in European languages and studies, affiliated with Imperial College London and University College London. He has a lifetime’s worth of experience translating Belarusian into English.