SENTENCE

This page functions as a table of contents for Mikhail Iossel's series SENTENCE, and will be updated as new instalments are added. 

SENTENCE: DMD

Mar 29, 2023

Mikhail Iossel is on the Red Arrow night express train from Moscow to Leningrad on January 9, 1986, when he meets a fellow traveler with two bottles of brandy and a box of chocolates. It’s a journey that can be told in a sentence.

SENTENCE: WALTZ No. 2

Apr 5, 2023

Mikhail Iossel pauses in a Montreal metro underpass to listen to a busking middle-aged violinist playing Shostakovich’s “Waltz No. 2.” It’s a melody that can fit into a sentence.

SENTENCE: GERMANS LIKE HIM

Apr 12, 2023

In 1983 Leningrad, at an underground art exhibition, Mikhail Iossel meets a German man who tells Iossel how he survived the Nazi era. A story in a burning sentence.

SENTENCE: PEN MAN SHIP

Apr 19, 2023

Seven-year-old Mikhail Iossel is writing out the alphabet in a Soviet communal apartment. Clean writing in a sentence.

SENTENCE: POSH LUST

Apr 26, 2023

Mikhail Iossel is having black tea and an almond croissant in a downtown shopping mall when a middle-aged man plunks himself down directly opposite Iossel at the otherwise empty long table. A life story in a sentence.

SENTENCE: SWEDISH DEATH CLEANING

May 3, 2023

Mikhail Iossel is riding a city bus in Montreal and thinking about a recently dead friend and a man on the street who resembles the friend with whom he’s lost touch. It’s a no-story in a “hasty” sentence, the latest installment of Iossel’s stories (and non-stories) in a single sentence.

SENTENCE: CRYING

May 10, 2023

Mikhail Iossel’s friend has an after-dinner nap nightmare about a firing squad. The latest installment of Iossel’s stories in one sentence.

SENTENCE: I AM

May 17, 2023

Mikhail Iossel recalls a moment in Leningrad as an 8-year-old Jewish boy, a luminous moment of being, loss, love, and language. The latest installment of SENTENCE, Iossel’s series of stories in a single sentence.

SENTENCE: LIFE HAPPENED

Jun 18, 2023

Mikhail Iossel is in Kenya, being interviewed by a Young Writer for a Nairobi-based publication, who, upon being shown some photos of Iossel in his youthful 20s, asks, “But… but… what happened?” SENTENCE: LIFE HAPPENED is the latest in Iossel’s series of stories-in-one-sentence.