Published by Glas Publishers (UK & Russia) in 1998, the 158-page 'Sonechka and Other Stories' is written by Ludmila Ulitskaya, who is a biologist by training, and was born in 1942. About Sonechka: Physically unattractive, lanky Sonechka with her skinny legs and flat bum, has for defensive reasons been a bookworm from the age of seven. Only when she is twenty-seven is she discovered, working in the basement of a Siberian library by artist Robert Victorovich who, already internationally renowned, returned to Russia in the early 1930s only to be exiled to the labour camps. When in Robert's old age a new romance invades their marriage, Sonechka reveals unexpected reserves of womanly strength. Sonechka is a novel whose unconventional and understated heroine will delight the English-speaking world. Sonechka was shortlisted for the Booker Russian Novel Prize and has been enthusiastically received in French, German and Italian translations. It has been awarded the Medici Prize for foreign fiction in France and the Penne Prize in Italy. Ludmila Ulitskaya's other stories in the book are Bronka; and The Daughter of Bokhara. Bronka tells an extraordinary tale of how the taboo love of a fourteen-year-old girl enables her to escape from the nightmare of life in a communal apartment in 1940s Moscow; whilst The Daughter of Bokhara tells how a Muslim girl, abandoned by her Russian husband, brings up a Down's Syndrome daughter against all the odds. At first despised or pitied, Ludmila Ulitskaya's heroines roundly turn the tables on mainstream society