Yevgeny Shklovsky, a Moscow critic and editor, has published two collections of short stories, Zalozhniki (Hostages) and Ta strana (The Other Country), as well as Pitomnik (The Greenhouse), a cycle of new stories recently in Novy Mir, the leading Russian literary journal. His story cycle Ulitsa (The Street) was shortlisted for the 2001 Yuri Kazakov Short Story Prize. The story in this issue of AGNI is his first in English translation.