The Wind Carries Away Dead Leaves

“The Wind Carries Away Dead Leaves” is the second novel by Lyceum prize laureate Ekaterina Manoylo. It raises the question of guilt and responsibility, deserved punishment, and family secrets that can break more than one life.

Here, as in her debut novel “Father Looks to the West,” the issue of fathers and children is brought up—but from a completely different angle. Two sisters forced to flee home, a mother who leaves the family for a beautiful life, a father who looks to his older daughter as a replacement for the wife who betrayed him—deception, despair, murder, a chase. In front of us is both sharp social prose and a road movie, a rare blend in Russian literature.