Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Time of Women by Elena Chizhova The Modern Novel. The world-wide literary novel from early 20th Century onwards. Chizhova: The Time of Women. Home » Russia » Elena Chizhova » Время женщин (The Time of Women) Elena Chizhova: Время женщин (The Time of Women) This novel is narrated by various characters, all women. The main character is Suzanna Bespalova who, for most of the book, is under seven years old. As she tells us early on, she will not talk till she is seven. No-one seems to know why. Her mother is Antonina, who works in a factory in Soviet-era Leningrad. She had met a man who had taken her out, taken her back to his flat, had sex with her and then disappeared, leaving her pregnant with Suzanna. She moves into a flat with three elderly women, getting her own nine and a half meters room, a big improvement on sharing a room with a lot of other single women. Antonina is initially scared but soon finds out that the three old ladies are very happy to look after Suzanna. She pretends to her employers, who are very strict about such things, given the housing shortage, that her mother has moved from the country to help her out, while it is the old ladies who actually look after Suzanna. Much of the book is about the relationship between the old ladies – they are called the grannies by both Antonina and Suzanna – and Antonina and Suzanna. Two of them had seemingly had children and even grandchildren but they have either died or just lost touch, so they are very happy to have a child to care for in their old age. The three were both born and brought up in the Tsarist age and, while they do accept some of the changes brought about by the Soviets, they do have what would be considered old-fashioned and, in some cases, downright counter-revolutionary views. They also reminisce a lot about the Tsarist period. Indeed, one of the charms of this book involves their reminiscences. One example of their views is that they decide to baptise Suzanna, without telling Antonina, and have her christened Sofia. They will use the diminutive Sofyushka for her when Antonina is not around. Another feature is that their Tsarist education means that they speak French so they teach Sophia French (something, we later learn helps her in later life). Despite the fact that Suzanna cannot or will not speak till she is seven, she clearly is a clever girl and learns to read both Russian and French. For example, the women deliberately make mistakes in their spoken French and Suzanna will frown at them. She can also write, as she shows when she writes the word Bolshiviks (sic) on a drawing, to the horror of the grannies. The grannies, however, are doting substitute parents. They take her out and even take her to a performance at the Marinsky. The story is narrated by the various women, including Suzanna, both from her point of view in later life as well as her pre-seven year old, non- speaking self. This gives us both Suzanna’s and Antonina’s perspective as well as the grannies’ perspective so we learn about Suzana’s life and learning as well as Antonina’s difficulties and the grannies’ earlier life. The women in the factory act as both a support group as well as a moral guidance. There is a council of women who feel that women with children should be married and are critical of men who get women pregnant and then do not carry out their responsibilities. When one man dates Antonina and then does not propose to her the women go into action and try not only to persuade him directly but by using pressure at work. Zoya Ivanovna, Antonina’s boss, is particularly forceful in this respect and is always having a go at Antonina. Antonina herself is something of a lost soul, missing (and still imagining) the father of her child while unsure of Nikolai, the man who has been dating her. She is also continually worried that the authorities will take Suzanna off to a home or make her go to school, where her non-talking will get her seriously teased. She is determined, however, to do the best by her child and even manages to get hold of a television, which she thinks will help Suzanna learn to speak. However, she gets ill – a serious tumour – for which she has to have an operation and which the women at the factory think is actually a pregnancy as a result of her relationship with Nikolai. We do learn that Suzanna will speak and will go on to become a successful artist and that she will be grateful to the grannies having brought her up (and taught her French). However, the book is about the relationship between the mute girl, her mother and the three grannies and Chizova and, as such, Chizhova tells an excellent story. We get something of a portrait of Leningrad during the Soviet era as well as a story of how a group of women can band together and help a fellow woman in distress and bring up a young child, despite the Soviet system and despite those that criticise. Publishing history. First published 2009 by Astrelʹ First English publication by Glagoslav in 2012. Copyright © The Modern Novel 2015-2021 | WordPress website design by Applegreen. The Time of Women. Three elderly women take care of an orphaned girl with a disability in the Soviet Union at the time when a special needs child would inevitably end up in an institution. They hide the little girl from the authorities, but when she gets seriously ill they are faced with a dilemma. Elena Chizhova was born in 1957 in Leningrad, the city which provides the setting for her award-winning The Time of Women, a novel about the secret culture of resistance and remembrance amongst women of Russia. Chizhova, a former economist, teacher and entrepreneur, turned to writing in 1996 after being rescued from a burning cruise ship. Her beautiful and sensitive prose has already been recognized in her homeland: she is the winner of the Northern Palm and the Literary Premier of 'Zvezda' journal in 2001, as well as of the Russian Booker Prize in 2009. Chizhova's prose shuns trickery in favour of emotional honesty in order to probe the weeping sores of Russian history that contemporary culture would sooner forget. Chizhova is the director of the local PEN centre in St. Petersburg. Elena Chizhova. Quick Study: Elena Chizhova writes novels that address historical, social, and religious questions. The Chizhova File: Elena Chizhova was first published as a fiction writer in 2000, when her novel The Children of Zaches , known in English translation as Little Zinnobers —about a teacher who starts a Shakespeare club for her students—came out in the journal Zvezda . Chizhova has gone on to write several more novels, one of which, The Time of Women , won the 2009 Russian Booker Prize. The Time of Woman has been translated into English and other languages and adapted for stage. Two earlier novels by Chizhova— The Criminal and The Monastery —were shortlisted for the Russian Booker prize. Chizhova also occasionally writes for the journal Questions of Literature and is director of the St. Petersburg PEN Club. Psssst………: When Chizhova worked as a teacher and researcher at a finance/economics institute, she “lived a double life” by researching literature at night… She worked in the ‘90s as an assistant to the general director of a large furniture factory… Chizhova spent her Russian Booker prize money on a new car, which she said was a planned purchase. Chizhova’s Places: Born in Leningrad, lives in St. Petersburg. Chizhova has said she doesn’t consider herself a “Petersburg writer”—she thinks of herself as a person who was born in the city and lives there, though she also thinks of herself as a European person, saying the Moscow- Petersburg/Leningrad conflict is nothing but an old literary myth. The Word on Chizhova: Kirkus Reviews begins its review of Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas’s translation of The Time of Women with, “Chizhova’s novel tells a stirring and claustrophobic tale of life in 1960s totalitarian Soviet Russia following the 900-day siege of Leningrad (now known as St. Petersburg) during World War II.” The review concludes with, “For Western readers unfamiliar with Russian/Soviet history, an especially dramatic read.” Writing for Questions of Literature in 2010, Elena Pogorelaya says, “For Chizhova, an epoch doesn’t become personified or crystallized in some set human form, primarily because time for her isn’t a category in the past but a present time with endless suffering and pain. With her experience as a person in the post-Soviet world, she broadly and confidently injects that experience into literary criticism essays, into fiction intended to avoid any reflection, plunging her characters into an atmosphere of premonitions, conjecture, imagination, and recollections. Each of Chizhova’s novels is a lively, synchronous, saturated narrative that takes shape before our eyes…” Chizhova on Chizhova: In an online exchange with readers in 2010, Chizhova said her life has been more interesting since she became a writer eight to ten years earlier, “Before that, I’d taught and worked in business but I was never really that interested, and I came to feel that I wasn’t doing the right thing. Circumstances prevented me from turning off that road. When the opportunity presented itself, I did it and I have no regrets whatsoever.” On Writing: In discussing The Time of Women with Ellen Barry of The New York Times , Chizova said of her characters, residents of post-War Leningrad, “‘If I am honest, I wrote it for those who died,’ she said. ‘I wrote it for them. I was speaking with them. I always had the feeling that they were listening to me.’” Chizhova Recommends: Chizhova said on the Echo of Moscow show “The Book Casino” that when she was a teacher she studied literature in her spare time, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. In a 2011 interview with Questions of Literature , Chizhova said she could recommend a list of recent books with a clean conscience; the Russian books were Pavel Basinsky’s Leo Tolstoy: Flight from Paradise , Elena Katishonok’s Once There Lived an Old Man and His Wife , and Eduard Kochergin’s Angel’s Doll . Chizhova also said the only contemporary writer for whom she feels a true kinship is Orhan Pamuk. Russian Bookshelf: ‘The Time of Women’ by Elena Chizhova. Translated by Simon Patterson & Nina Chordas (Glagoslav Publications), narrated by Raz Mason, edited by Daria Donina, music by Artemiy Boronin & Ilya Boronin, illustration by Ivanna Mikhailenko. Born in Leningrad in 1957, Elena Chizhova worked as an economist, teacher and entrepreneur until a rescue from a burning cruise ship in 1996 inspired a change in her life focus. Since that time she has been overcome by the longing for writing. Elena Chizhova made her debut with Zinnober's Poppets in the magazine “Zvezda” (“The Star”) in 2000. She has gone on to be nominated for and to win several prestigious literary awards, including the shortlist Russian Booker Prize in 2003 and 2005, and the Russian Booker prize for The Time of Women in 2009. Elena Chizhova's book The Time of Women weaves together the personal and historical struggles of mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and women who become sisters through сircumstance in “a secret culture of resistance and remembrance”. The novel captures the atmosphere of a communal apartment of the early 1960s, where memories of starvation and death in first cataclysmic half of the century, as well as the loss of their own children, have receded in the background of everyday worries – such as how to preserve flour from one season to the next, or how to afford a wool suit for the 7-year-old girl. Here the author gives priority of voice to the grandmothers who having lost their families in the World War II siege of Leningrad and quietly tell their stories to the future writer during confidential conversations at home. Chizhova uses these scraps of stories to form base of her narrative, voicing the terrible facts of the siege in contrast to official versions from Soviet books. The novel features a variety of characters representing a collage of Soviet society, which only seems to be equal and to treat all its citizens alike: the aristocracy, the clerisy, villagers secretly mocking communist ideals while hoping only for God's help, low-level party officials, trade union members ardently loyal to the Soviet Union, factory workers just starting to believe in the benefits of Soviet society and hoping that one day it will actually be possible to have a washing machine at home. The emotional tension of the book with its complicated narrative structure, transferring the speaking voice from one character to another, has aroused the interest of theater directors: it has been successfully realized as a play by the famous Moscow Sovremennik Theater "Sovremennik" and the Saint Petersburg Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater. THE TIME OF WOMEN. The American publication of a Russian Booker Prize-winning political novel, translated by Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas. Chizhova’s novel tells a stirring and claustrophobic tale of life in 1960s totalitarian Soviet Russia following the 900-day siege of Leningrad (now known as St. Petersburg) during World War II. Five different voices narrate the story. There’s Suzanna (affectionately baptized Sofia), a mute 7- year-old at the novel’s center, who spends her days daydreaming and drawing who and what she sees around her and her single mother, Antonina, a downtrodden factory worker. Three older women—the curmudgeonly Yevdokia, uppity Glikeria and well-educated Ariadna—take Sofia and Antonina into their communal, ramshackle home and become Suzanna’s surrogate “grannies.” Their story is a simple one. Aside from Antonina’s ailing medical condition (she falls ill from cancer), not much happens. But it’s the ordinariness of these women’s daily drudgery—the endless queues for supplies, the hours boiling dirty rags, the constant cooking of potatoes and bland food—that comes vibrantly alive on the page. Unlike most Russian literature, there’s a dearth of male characters in this novel. As young boys and older men went off to war and were later killed, these stalwart women remained to fend for themselves. Their courage and dignity, despite rampant government oppression, is seen in their gestures, in the lines on their faces, in their proud, collective silent rebellion. A scattered, stream-of-consciousness writing style takes some getting used to, especially at the beginning, and it’s often difficult to keep track of which character is doing the narrating or whether a conversation is spoken or merely overheard. But persistence promises hearty rewards, including a vision of a Russian past not often revisited. Backmatter includes footnotes. For Western readers unfamiliar with Russian/Soviet history, an especially dramatic read. Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012. ISBN: 978-9081823913. Page Count: 272. Publisher: Glagoslav Publications. Review Posted Online: July 26, 2012. Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012. Share your opinion of this book. Did you like this book? ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH. by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1963. While a few weeks ago it seemed as if Praeger would have a two month lead over Dutton in their presentation of this Soviet best seller, both the "authorized" edition (Dutton's) and the "unauthorized" (Praeger's) will appear almost simultaneously. There has been considerable advance attention on what appears to be as much of a publishing cause celebre here as the original appearance of the book in Russia. Without entering into the scrimmage, or dismissing it as a plague on both your houses, we will limit ourselves to a few facts. Royalties from the "unauthorized" edition will go to the International Rescue Committee; Dutton with their contracted edition is adhering to copyright conventions. The Praeger edition has two translators and one of them is the translator of Doctor Zhivago Dutton's translator, Ralph Parker, has been stigmatized by Praeger as "an apologist for the Soviet regime". To the untutored eye, the Dutton translation seems a little more literary, the Praeger perhaps closer to the rather primitive style of the original. The book itself is an account of one day in the three thousand six hundred and fifty three days of the sentence to be served by a carpenter, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. (Solzhenitsyn was a political prisoner.) From the unrelenting cold without, to the conditions within, from the bathhouse to the latrine to the cells where survival for more than two weeks is impossible, this records the hopeless facts of existence as faced by thousands who went on "living like this, with your eyes on the ground". The Dutton edition has an excellent introduction providing an orientation on the political background to its appearance in Russia by Marvin Kalb. All involved in its publication (translators, introducers, etc.) claim for it great "artistic" values which we cannot share, although there is no question of its importance as a political and human document and as significant and tangible evidence of the de-Stalinization program. Pub Date: June 15, 1963. ISBN: 0451228146. Page Count: 181. Publisher: Praeger. Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011. Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1963. Share your opinion of this book. Did you like this book? More by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A touching family drama that effectively explores the negative impact of stress on fragile relationships. A WEEK AT THE SHORE. by Barbara Delinsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 2020. A middle-aged woman returns to her childhood home to care for her ailing father, confronting many painful secrets from her past. When Mallory Aldiss gets a call from a long-ago boyfriend telling her that her elderly father has been gallivanting around town with a gun in his hand, Mallory decides it’s time to return to the small Rhode Island town that she’s been avoiding for more than a decade. Mallory’s precocious 13-year-old daughter, Joy, is thrilled that she'll get to meet her grandfather at long last, and an aunt, too, and she'll finally see the place where her mother grew up. When they arrive in Bay Bluff, it’s barely a few hours before Mallory bumps into her old flame, Jack, the only man she’s ever really loved. Gone is the rebellious young person she remembers, and in his place stands a compassionate, accomplished adult. As they try to reconnect, Mallory realizes that the same obstacle that pushed them apart decades earlier is still standing in their way: Jack blames Mallory’s father for his mother’s death. No one knows exactly how Jack’s mother died, but Jack thinks a love affair between her and Mallory’s father had something to do with it. As Jack and Mallory chase down answers, Mallory also tries to repair her rocky relationships with her two sisters and determine why her father has always been so hard on her. Told entirely from Mallory’s perspective, the novel has a haunting, nostalgic quality. Despite the complex and overlapping layers to the history of Bay Bluff and its inhabitants, the book at times trudges too slowly through Mallory’s meanderings down Memory Lane. Even so, Delinsky sometimes manages to pick up the pace, and in those moments the beauty and nuance of this complicated family tale shine through. Readers who don’t mind skimming past details that do little to advance the plot may find that the juicier nuggets and realistically rendered human connections are worth the effort. A touching family drama that effectively explores the negative impact of stress on fragile relationships.