Life Begins At Forty — David Brining

Once Nikolai Nikolayevich worked at the Volgograd Tractor Factory. Now he runs a kiosk. As he turns forty, he reviews his life, his military service, his partisan parents, heroes of the Great Patriotic War, and considers the future of his son Ivan as he heads to hospital for a life-threatening operation.

The first in a monthly series of interlinked stories about the hopes, dreams, aspirations and frustrations of the Ribakov family and their friends living in 1990s post-communist Russia.