These superb 18 stories, translated from the Russian by Anya Migdal, from Tolstaya, the great grand-niece of Leo Tolstoy, is her first collection in English in two decades, and it is cause for celebration. She opens with the story 20/20, in which weeks of darkness after eye surgery leave the narrator able to visualise an internal world in detail, leading to her writing her first short story. The narrator of the title story moves from Russia to Princeton, New Jersey, in 1992 and commutes four hours to a creative writing teaching job where she is at the mercy of end-of-semester student evaluations. See the Reverse, set in Ravenna, Italy, where Dante is buried, creates a dialogue between the narrator and her late father, who visited the place 40 years before and sent her excited postcards. Tolstaya’s inimitable voice rings clearly throughout. (Credit: Knopf)