Unpredictable, poignant, and often comic, the eight moving stories that make up The Red Passport investigate the impossible hopes and tragic setbacks of natives and foreigners alike in post-Soviet Russia. From My Mothers Garden, the parable of an old woman who refuses to accept the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, to The Young People of Moscow, which describes an extraordinary day in the life of an aging couple selling antiquated Soviet poetry in an underground bazaar, these intricately woven narratives provide unforgettable slices of a Russia that is at once both exotic and disconcertingly familiar.