{"product_id":"the-blue-cup-1","title":"The Blue Cup","description":"50 pp. English text, translated from the Russian by B. Isaacs. The protagonist and his six-year-old daughter Svetlan arrive at a dacha in playful moods, but their (respective) wife and mother Marusya has other ideas: she burdens them with petty tasks, then departs (apparently in a sulk) to accompany her old friend, a pilot, to the station. Next morning, before going uptown, she blames her husband and daughter for breaking her blue cup in a store-room. Taking this unjust accusation as a proverbial last straw, both leave the house and embark upon an eventful and chaotic day-long \"adventure\". It involves pacifying the two boys (one of whom accuses another of being 'a fascist' for using an insult word 'jidovka' with regards to a Jewish girl), walking straight into a military exercise site with a lot of shooting going on, losing their stock of gingerbread to a four-year old, but getting a kitten from him as a reward, and near-drowning in a marsh. They return home at dusk, find Marusya worried and happy to see them and spend a lovely evening, with Svetlana (who initially expressed pessimism on that point) admitting that \"life's a good thing, after all\". The mystery of a blue cup's demise remains, though, unsolved.","brand":"Progress Publishers","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41940471939142,"sku":"2345154","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1232\/9510\/files\/2345154.jpg?v=1721091604","url":"https:\/\/ym-demo.myshopify.com\/products\/the-blue-cup-1","provider":"Yesterday's Muse","version":"1.0","type":"link"}