This year the prestigious national literary prize Russian Booker goes to the novel about Leningrad and its dwellers, as described by its author Elena Chizhova from Saint Petersburg. The main characters of her book are women of the pre-war epoch. “The novel A Time of Women tells about their twisted lives. In those years millions of men died. Women were left alone and had to carry that hard lot alone and, it should be noted, somehow managed it”, the writer explains. The novel still remains unpublished, though. Negotiations with a big publishing house are underway so far. The Russian Booker Prize has been awarded annually since 1991. Among its winners there were Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Makanin, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Vasily Aksyonov, Mikhail Yelizarov and other famous men of letters.