When a Person Leaves

16 hrs. 10 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Elena Katishonok

Narrator Vyacheslav Gerasimov

Description

At the dawn of the 1930s, a young businessman buys a new house and moves into one of its apartments. Other tenants include an officer, a beautiful stage actress, two doctors, an antique dealer, a Russian князь-emigrant, a gymnasium teacher, a notary… Each has their own joys and sorrows, their own secrets, their own voice. Woven naturally into this many-voiced chorus is the voice of the house itself, and the fates of the people unexpectedly and strangely intertwine when Soviet tanks enter the small republic—and, a year later, fascist tanks. In that terrible, brief year, some tenants ended up in prison camps, others must be relocated to the ghetto; a third group manages to save themselves at the cost of risky adventures. Romantic ties are torn apart, as is the connection between past and present; one must choose not between good and evil, but between a greater evil and a lesser one… Then the war ends, but another begins—war waged by power against its own people. The house is filled with new residents: a former front-line soldier, a telegraph operator, old Bolsheviks, a taxi driver, a large family… A tightly structured composition, keenly captured details, subtle psychological insight, light irony, an impressionistic manner of writing—these are what distinguish E. Katishonok’s new novel.