So Loud, So Quiet

Is it easy to be young? To get up every morning at the crack of dawn, to jostle in a maddening minibus on the way to work, to spend aimless hours in an office ruled by a shrew of a boss. And in the evening, to return home the same way, not understanding what one really wants from this life. And so it goes day after day, day after day. The only change is the music in the headphones. But what happens if one day you do something that destroys the routine that drives you crazy? Fall in love! Leave! Find your calling! The dazzling, stylistically explosive prose of Lena Burkova is exactly about this: each of us is searching for ourselves, and in this search, we should not be afraid to move forward, to discard the unnecessary, to experiment, to develop. Sometimes life has radical turns — long live new people, new horizons, new hopes and achievements! “This story is about the unbearable lightness of being. It feels like a diary peered into from a familiar face. It contains painfully much about all of us, the indignant, the unyielding, those who left but remained.” Ekaterina Pisareva, Editor-in-Chief of the Litres Group. Cover design and illustrations by Natalia Patova. We thank the artist for kindly providing the drawings.