The book “Roads and Fates” reflects the entire 20th century. Natalia Ilyina (1914–1994) was born in St. Petersburg, in the family of a tsarist officer and a noblewoman from the Voeikov family; after the revolution, the family emigrated to Harbin; in 1947, among the repatriates, Ilyina returned to Russia, where she became a famous prose writer, but all her life she was forced to answer the question: “Why did you return to Russia?” With rare frankness and bitter self-irony, Natalia Ilyina writes about the history of her family, Harbin and Moscow life , the circumstances of the return to the USSR from China, meetings with Alexander Vertinsky, Anna Akhmatova, Korney Chukovsky and about his wife, the famous linguist Alexander Reformatsky. The book is supplemented with new materials - memories of Natalia Ilyina’s family members.