The author of the novel "The Time of Women" was awarded the "Russian Booker - 2009"

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

The writer Elena Chizhova became the laureate of the prestigious literary prize "Russian Booker - 2009". The winner will receive a cash reward of 500 thousand rubles. Despite the fact that Chizhova has already been nominated for the award several times, this is the first time she receives the main award.

Yelena Chizhova, a prose writer, translator and essayist, received the Russian Booker for her novel The Time of Women. According to the writer, in this novel she speaks not on behalf of herself, but on behalf of her great-grandmother, her grandmother who died during the blockade, and her relatives who died in Leningrad in 1937-1938.

In addition to Chizhova, five more authors, included in the short-list of the award, claimed victory this year: Elena Katishonok (“Once upon a time there lived an old man with an old woman”), Roman Senchin (“Eltyshevs”), Alexander Terekhov (“Stone Bridge”), Boris Khazanov ("Yesterday's Eternity"), Leonid Yuzefovich ("Cranes and Dwarfs"). Last year, writer Mikhail Elizarov became the laureate of the Russian Booker with his novel The Librarian, RIA Novosti recalls. Also, Bulat Okudzhava, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Alexander Illichevsky and others became prize winners in different years.

“If I managed to convey their heartache, their intonation, then I am happy and, perhaps, it is precisely what I am not saying on my own that bribed the members of the jury,” suggested the laureate of the literary prize. Chizhova admitted that when choosing a central theme for her works, she always thinks about those fateful milestones in the history of our country that influenced the character and self-awareness of its inhabitants.

The main heroine of the novel "The Time of Women" is the limit woman Antonina Bespalova, who comes to St. Petersburg and works at a factory. She is seduced by a St. Petersburg dude, from whom she gives birth to a daughter. Soon the heroine learns that she is terminally ill and wants to send her little daughter to an orphanage, but three neighbors in a communal apartment - lonely "pre-revolutionary" old women - do not allow her to do this and take care of the girl.

“We got lost in three pines and do not understand what good and evil are, and the three old women, the heroines of my novel, absolutely understood this, and we all need to strive for the same,” Chizhova said.