The Master of Things

Elena Chizova is a prose writer and the author of many books, including “Women’s Time” (the Russian Booker Prize), “A City Written from Memory,” “The Terracotta Old Woman,” “Orest and His Son,” and “The Sinologist.” “The Lord of Things” is her new novel. Saint Petersburg, March 201… Anna, a former schoolteacher, hopes that after the sweeping changes in the country, her own life will change too. And it really does—this small world where, besides Anna, live her family: her mother, the owner of a rich collection of antiques, and her son, a budding game designer creating the Great Game. But the cause will be the terrible truth about the past.

“Long ago, when he was still in school, they walked from a computer shop, and his mother suddenly started brainwashing him. She talked about friendship and that friends should be sought among classmates. He replied that he didn’t understand why he had to limit himself to this, essentially an accidental set, instead of looking for something in the vast and truly boundless: on the Net.”