One More Year by Sana Krasikov

". . . Sana Krasikov is an excellent prose stylist with a deep sense of people, place and time . . ."

One More Year: A short story collection from an immigrant’s point of view.

In a nation founded and profoundly changed by immigrants, Sana Krasikov brings a modern immigrant’s view to how much America has been influenced by immigrants and vice versa.

The Repatriates deals with a Russian man who has made a very good living in the corporate sector in America but returns to Moscow to open his own company and become his own boss. His faithful wife follows him only to find herself confused and dismayed by the changes in her husband. He sees his wife as a parasite living off his hard work, never supporting him.

Among the stories dealing with Russian immigrants is There Will Be No Fourth Rome. A young woman is caught up in a relationship with a married man. She returns to Russia and finds that life there is not so different for her pregnant childhood friend who plans to abandon her career as a doctor to help run a company with her German boyfriend—who also has with wife and children.

A Muslim woman leaves her polygamous husband and moves to New York to get away from the drama caused by the first wife. Her husband begs her to come back, promising to divorce his first wife, but she sets herself on fire rather than be disgraced.

From a woman who visits her mother’s family in Russia and finds Dr. Spock’s book on raising children in English, to a mother whose son visits from Russia and barely recognizes him, Krasikov’s vignettes are marvelous gems of inspiration and insight. Each story is a delightful and sometimes sad clash of cultures and identity. Told with spare and evocative prose, One More Year transcends the two-dimensional boundaries of storytelling to offer a more profound truth. Sana Krasikov is an excellent prose stylist with a deep sense of people, place and time.

Reviewer: J. M. Cornwell