WASJA

Vasya moves to a Russian village to take up her first librarian’s post. The realities of her new life soon put paid to her visions of droves of enthusiastic readers. Her flat is a dump, the library is a lean-to next to the grocer’s shop, and readers are a seemingly extinct species. The girl from the shop is the only villager who shows interest in the library: the partition walls come in useful when she’s making out with the local men. Seeing the devastated Vasya in her woollen cap and large spectacles, the shop-girl tells her that the only remedy is “sto gramm” of vodka – and a real man. But the affair with the gas-man doesn’t turn out be exactly what Vasya expected, either...