Алиса Пермякова

Have you seen the film “Amélie”? The one about the two oddballs in Montmartre. It was also supposed to reveal the formula of love and to be incredibly romantic. At the end, a strange young man who is trying to unravel a conspiracy theory in torn-up photographs from under photo booths and an equally strange girl who perceived the world as a set of details and small things, and then decided to do good with those small things, decide that they care about each other and ride off into the distance on

Have you ever noticed how strongly culture shapes our perception? Cities hold one set of values, the countryside another, and between neighbouring nationalities the differences are more striking still. Here it is fashionable, and psychologically healthy, to separate from your parents and build everything yourself, whereas among more southern peoples that is all but unthinkable. Or take attitudes to family. The further south you go, the earlier it is held that there is no life without it, for a m

My friend Miroslava — Mira to her friends — had astonished me ever since our university days with her incredible logic and with the uses she found for it. My favourite example: everywhere and always she stressed how independent she was, how she had absolutely no need of men whatsoever, and at the same time she was devoutly certain that every man around was making eyes at her. Well, if not at her, then perhaps at me, however much I denied it. It was rather like counting up the signs of attention

Anfisa was always the activist. She was the one who managed to talk our thoroughly apathetic year group into collecting the textbooks at a more convenient hour than our librarians had planned, and to drag most of our fellow students out to a cafe. She talked everyone into joining the student comedy league despite the rumours that it was the shortest road to being expelled, and she was the first to sign up for every optional course, club and field trip going. She was a whirlwind, a chaos packed into one single person.