This is the debut book of a young writer. Her skill in constructing a poignant plot of a short story or short story and masterful command of expressive artistic detail in describing the subtlest human experiences or natural phenomena were immediately noticed by both critics and readers (Nadezhda Gorlova is a laureate of literary awards from the magazines “New World” and “Russian Cover” and the Eureka Prize). The heroes of these works are ordinary people, residents of disappearing Russian villages and Jewish towns, whose traditional way of life is being destroyed under the blows of recent waves of migration. But life goes on as before, people fall in love, build families, their own home, cultivate the land and suddenly lose loved ones, die from love fever and drunkenness, leaving their descendants with the burning mysteries of existence. The narration is almost always told in the first person, which conveys true authenticity. But Gorlova’s prose is not stylized verisimilitude or everyday life, for it always contains the mystery of ever-changing nature and the authenticity of the author’s dreams. As the famous critic Pavel Basinsky rightly noted, “when reading Nadezhda Gorlova’s prose, you need to mentally put on... black glasses. Calm your eyesight, tune in to distinguishing all the details. And then sharply take off your glasses and see what the author sees.”< /p>