Cказки Призраков. Tales of Ghosts. Премия им. Эдгара По / Edgar Poe Award (Билингва: Rus/Eng)

 Rein announced Alexandra Kryuchkova the winner in the poetry class with the award of Sergey Yesenin «Golden Autumn» order decoration and a certificate for free edition of her book from the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia. In the same place, in Milan, Alexandra was also marked in the prose course by the writer Victor Erofeev[18 - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ерофеев,_Виктор_Владимирович], who singled out for the seminarians her novel «The Book of Secret Knowledge», which opens the author’s «Playing Another Reality» series.

«Tales of Ghosts» harmoniously complement the series. The idea of «assembling» these stories into a book is admirable: all the main characters are already ghosts. Having moved to the Other World, they, together with the author, find themselves in a long and slow queue to the Heaven Chancellery, located in the City of the Sun, where everyone will be informed about his further destiny. To pass the time and warm the soul, the ghosts light up the fire, throwing into it their earthly lifetime stories.

By the will of Lord, the author, in fact a listener of the stories, eventually returns from the City of the Sun to Earth in order to write down «Tales of Ghosts» by heart and pass them on to people.

It is no coincidence that the book consists of several parts. Arranged according to the principle from Earth to Heaven, it slowly leads the reader further and further into the Subtle World, to the place where the planet Earth is seen as a barely distinguishable point in the Abyss of the Cosmic Mind.

Part I. «Love me now!» is a collection of philosophical love stories, united by the regret and remorse of the main characters that they could not live for real the opportunity of given to them Love. The reasons are different, but the result cannot be changed: unexpressed love gnaws the souls, pulls them into the past, where they can never return. Is it possible to make dreams come true in a posthumous reality? The story «A Cats’ Name» from this collection deserves the highest praise: it is not just touching – the reader won’t doubt a bit that it is being told by… a dog devoted to its owner!

Part II.

«The Master of Fates» are shocking stories about those who imagine themselves to be God: perverted maniacs and quite on their minds – cold-blooded and prudent killers commit crimes without a twinge of conscience.