One More Year (2008)

Tales of the urban immigrant experience are so well-worn they practically merit their own genre. But the men and women in Ukraine-born Sana Krasikov's debut collection, One More Year are hardly figments of some Ellis Island tour guide's imagination. Although one protagonist describes herself as ''one more undifferentiated face of the East,'' Krasikov imbues her writing with a tangible humanity that erases the otherness an unfamiliar culture so often breeds, and in the process makes us care about each one of her characters. Whether male or female, teenage or elderly, in chaotic modern Moscow or a bucolic New York City suburb, their stories feel immediate, urgent, and gratifyingly real. A-