Elfinia: The Enchanted City

The title echoes a biblical thought: “Whoever looks at the wind will not sow; whoever watches the clouds will not reap.”

The story takes place in the 1970s, in a small Soviet town. Rita Borodina, a young Russian-language teacher, leads a quiet, familiar life: works at school, takes care of her mother, and in her rare moments of freedom tries to arrange her personal life. Everything collapses in an instant when Rita learns that she is not her real daughter: as a baby, she was taken from a children’s home. Her real parents—Lea and Samuil Richters—died under strange circumstances that were never clarified.

Rita sets out to find answers herself, trying to lift the veil over the past that someone has carefully hidden. Who were the Richters? What happened twenty-three years ago? How can you live on when your old biography suddenly seems like a fake? And how can you understand yourself when you don’t know where you come from?

“Who Watches the Wind” is more than a detective story. It’s a novel about trying to get to the truth, about the price of decisions, about family secrets, and about painful knots of 20th-century history. It is a story about staying loyal to yourself— something you have to defend when circumstances are stronger than familiar supports.

“[In this book] there are many losses, but also a lot of hope and light. It’s about how a person changes when the world stops holding them. About how hard it is to find the answer to the question ‘why?’ and how absolutely necessary it is to find it. About memory, fears, growing up—about how time leaves traces and you have to follow those traces. About past times, long gone, that resonate today so clearly and so strongly,” — Olga Kromer.

About the author: Olga Kromer is a prose writer, author of the novel “That City” (prizes “Yasnaya Polyana” and “ABS Award,” longlists) and the novella “Every Atom” (“Yasnaya Polyana,” longlist).

The audio version of the novel—the story of striving to remain yourself no matter what—is read by Maria Orlova, giving it a vivid and emotional tone.