Where the cats bark

Set in the Caucasian republics of present-day Russia, this family saga unfolds in two timelines: during the USSR and in the 1990s after its collapse. At the beginning we meet Nadia, a widowed restaurant owner, and her adult grandson Denis, who makes his living as a black cab driver. The story from the USSR era presents the marriage of Nadi and her husband Alim, who took her from Moscow, where he was at war, to the Caucasus. She works in the local library, but at first glance she doesn't fit in with the locals, her husband regularly seeks solitude in the nearby mountains. They have two daughters together, whose story we follow in the prose afterwards. The author realistically depicts life in unusual places in difficult times.