The City Written from Memory

Prose writer Elena Chizhova is a St. Petersburg native of the fourth generation; the author of ten novels, including “The Time of Women” (Russian Booker Prize), “The Master of Things”, “Orest and Son”, “The Terracotta Old Woman”. St. Petersburg, “the most beautiful, mysterious, mystical city of Russia”, is present in one way or another (as a setting or one of the characters) in every book by the writer. “The City Written from Memory” is a detective novel where St. Petersburg becomes a city of memory — personal, family, historical. Elena Chizhova reconstructs the captivating story of her family piece by piece. A countess's maid, a stove master, a brilliant seamstress, a soldier, a chief engineer, a factory owner, and a half-breed girl who “entertains her friends with stories” in the attic — four generations keeping the memory of the events of the 20th century that befell the Leningraders: the Civil War, the repressions of the 1930s, the blockade, evacuation, and the difficult postwar times. «Thirty kilometers before the final station, my mother got off the train… To get to Leningrad she hitched a ride on a freight truck. Alone. At home, on 1st Krasnoarmeyskaya, an empty room awaited her: the only pre-war furniture left was an iron bed. However, the lack of furniture did not upset her at all: the main thing is Leningrad. Among the joys of the first days: everyone speaks in the Leningrad way. This feeling of the language – pure, newly found after a long separation – remained for a lifetime.»