The City Written from Memory

A new novel by the author of the bestseller “The Time of Women.”

Prose writer Elena Chizova is a fourth-generation Petersburg native; author of eight novels, including “The Time of Women” (the Russian Booker Prize), “Orest and Son,” “Terracotta Old Woman,” and “The Chinise Widow.” St. Petersburg, “the most beautiful, mystical, and mysterious city in Russia,” is somehow (either as the setting or one of the characters) present in every book by the writer.

“City Written from Memory” is a novel-investigation in which St. Petersburg becomes a city of memory—personal, familial, and historical. Elena Chizova reconstructs, piece by piece, the captivating history of her family. A count’s maid, a stove maker, an outstanding seamstress, a soldier, the chief engineer, the owner of a manufactory, and a mixed-race girl who “poisons the novels” to her courtyard friends from the attic—four generations preserve the memory of events of the 20th century that fell to the lot of the people of Leningrad: the Civil War, the repressions of the 1930s, the blockade, the evacuation, and the harsh post-war years.

“About thirty kilometers before the final station, Mom got off the train... To reach Leningrad, she traveled in a passing freight truck. Alone. At home, on 1st Krasnoarmeyskaya, an empty room awaited her: from the pre-war furniture, only an iron bed remained. Still, the lack of furniture didn’t upset Mom at all: the main thing was Leningrad.

“From the joys of the first days: everyone speaks with a Leningrad accent. That feeling of language—pure, regained after a long separation—stayed with me for life.”