Music in an Empty House

A new work from the “Elena Shubina Publishing” is devoted to the theme of growing up, finding true femininity, and coming to terms with the past. The book tells of the complex relationship between a daughter and her father—a musician who once left the family. Sofya Arzhanykh, known for the lead role in the series “Cicadas,” voiced the audiobook version of this story.

“Music in an Empty House” is a coming-of-age novel filled with pain, mistakes, and betrayal, but at the end the reader finds silence and love—love that has always been near. This is how the work is described by Olga Breininger.

The author, Yana Verzun, is a writer and journalist living in St. Petersburg and a resident of the Peredelkino House of Creative Work. Her previous works include the novel “Dependent” and the project “People Read Stories.”

The plot of the new novel centers on Anya, whose parents divorced when she was five. After school, she moves to St. Petersburg to study journalism and meet her father. In this city full of temptations and shadows of the past, she will have to understand what kind of person her father will turn out to be—and whether this city will accept her. The story, set in the early 2000s, echoes the losses of the 1990s.

A bearable future is possible only through accepting the past.