The first novel by the publicist Elena Zelinskaya is difficult to fit into genre frameworks: there are too few details for a family saga, the power of artistic images does not allow us to attribute "On the Rivers of Babylon" to documentary prose, real people and events show us a century and a half of the country's history. p>The measured, peaceful life of the heroes on the outskirts of the Russian Empire, vividly described at the beginning of the novel, should not mislead the reader - the rivers will carry them into the terrible whirlpools of the 20th century: bloody battles, repressions, massacres, pestilence, hunger - nothing bypass the Magdeburg and Savich families. The author deliberately did not simplify the plot. Meticulously, with indication of chronological and geographical details, he singles out historical milestones, scenes of bloody battles, strikes, city life. Dialogues, conveyed in the language of the authors of the White Guard memoirs, are sharply interspersed in the novel with bare historical information in the style of an encyclopedia. The presentation of additional lines is presented in the novel as if by chance, but it is clear that for each paragraph a lot of memoirs, documents, testimonies were studied - we are faced with the fate of prominent scientists, writers, teachers ... It will be difficult for an unprepared reader to fit these puzzles into the overall picture, but it will be interesting . It is difficult for the author himself, and he cannot stand it - a new hero appears in the novel - a publicist, a descendant of a glorious birth, who gives peremptory assessments of the events of the past.