Who Watches the Wind

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

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

Rita takes on the search for answers herself, trying to lift the veil over the past that someone carefully hid. Who were the Richters? What happened twenty-three years ago? How to live on if her former biography suddenly seems like a fake? And how to understand herself when she doesn’t know where she comes from?

“Who Watches the Wind” is more than a detective story. It is 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 of staying true to yourself—something you have to defend when circumstances are stronger than familiar supports.

“[This book] has many losses, but also a lot of hope and light. It is 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 walk along those traces. About past times, long gone, that resonate today so clearly and so powerfully,” — 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 “Each Atom” (“Yasnaya Polyana,” longlist).

The audio version of the novel— the story of striving to remain oneself against all odds—is read by Maria Orlova, giving it a vivid and emotional tone.