‘Like Water and Other Stories‘ is a collection of fifty two short stories by Olga Zilberbourg. That sounds like a lot of stories, but it doesn’t feel that way while reading the book, because the stories are of varied length – some of them are what used to be called short-shorts which run for a few pages, while others are just a paragraph long like a Lydia Davis story, something which is called micro fiction these days. There are some stories which are longer too.

There are two major types of stories in the book – the Russian stories and the American stories. Olga Zilberbourg is Russian-American and so she has given importance to both sides, though I would say that the book on the whole leans towards the Russian side. Many of the Russian stories explore the Russian-American experience. One of my favourites was a story…