The Time of Women

Elena Chizhova is a fourth-generation resident of St. Petersburg, the author of the books "The City Written from Memory," "Fear and Possessions," "The Master of Things," "The Terracotta Old Woman," "Orest and Son," and others. St. Petersburg is present in one way or another in every book of the writer, which defines both the atmosphere of the novels and the psychology of the characters. The novel "The Time of Women" was awarded the "Russian Booker" prize, translated into twenty languages, and featured in the shortlists of several foreign awards; it became the literary basis for plays in the "Contemporary" theater (Moscow), the G.A. Tovstonogov BDТ (St. Petersburg), and others. Leningrad, the border of the 1950s–1960s. A communal apartment, where three lonely old women “from the past” — Ariadne, Glikeria, and Evdokia — are joined by a worker from the Admiralty plant, a single mother named Antonina, and her little daughter. By the will of fate, the old women become the closest people to the mute girl who "talks" to them through her drawings. The story is told by the grown-up girl, an artist, about that life, about the grandmothers, about the past that has departed but does not disappear…