Osipov, a cardiologist by training, practiced both medicine and the craft of fiction until he left Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Nearly two decades ago, he founded a cardiology ward in a hospital in the small town of Tarusa, 101 kilometers from Moscow, and organized a fundraising campaign to have it renovated and turned into a modern facility. The town is unique: many artistic and literary figures used to live here, some of them former prisoners of Stalin’s camps who were barred from living within 100 kilometers of big cities. The short stories in Osipov’s collection are of two kinds. Some reflect his identity as a Moscow intellectual, describing the perennial dilemmas of a liberal facing an oppressive state: What are the acceptable moral compromises the individual can make with the powers that be? Is it time to emigrate or is life in Russia still tolerable? Other stories deal with his daily routine as a cardiologist in a provincial town where “alcohol is our battlefield....It plays a role in the life of practically every family. And we acknowledge....its power over ourselves.” But his medical mission is still rewarding, and Osipov is able to tell himself that “this is as good as it’ll ever get” and “this is what happiness is.”