Six Trains of No Return collects twelve short stories and novellas that examine immigrant sagas and dislocations that are both uniquely personal and universal. These are the stories of past lives and loves, memories both fragile and unreliable, and our shared ties to larger historical narratives. They also evoke the Soviet Jewish experience during what was thought to be “The End of History” of the waning days of the USSR. A French-Cambodian woman embarks on a series of mysterious trips to the “killing fields” of her youth, an encounter in a Nigerian jail forces the narrator to face an impossible moral dilemma, a tender friendship grows between three young soldiers drafted into the Soviet army, a story of a young man’s chance romantic encounter with a childhood friend and how it triggers memories of long-forgotten schoolyard cruelties, a pair of soldiers in the waning days of the Soviet Union watching the movie Jaws for the first time at a semi-underground video salon. Emotionally resonant yet edged with quiet humor, these stories explore themes of displacement, belonging, and memory—speaking across cultures and backgrounds.
