Witch century

This world combines ordinariness and myth. Here the witches dance in ballet, and the Navi roam the streets of the modern city - angry and unhappy, pursued by the cruel service of the Chugayster. When collapse is inevitable, when catastrophe is inevitable - who will believe in a new love, so impossible by narrow-minded standards?

Events unfold in a certain country, reminiscent of Eastern Europe of our world. Young uninitiated witch Ivga really wants to be an ordinary person, but she is a witch, and nothing can change that. She managed to hide her identity from everyone, even from her fiance Nazar, until a friend of the future father-in-law came to visit them - inquisitor Claudius Starge. She had to leave home.

Meanwhile, the situation in the country is heating up, the witches are becoming more active, rumors are spreading about the "unborn mother" of witches, and if she appears, chaos will await the country. Claudius Starge is trying to find out where the threat is coming from, and the memory of his girlfriend, Dunk, who died many years ago and then returned to the undead, navka, does not help him at all.

And Ivga meanwhile does not know what to do - either an initiation awaits her, which will turn her into a soulless witch, a powerful creature devoid of human feelings; or registration is a humiliating procedure, after which it will become “safe for society”. She is dating Starge again ...

Mythology

• Witches are girls born in humans, capable of being initiated into creatures similar to humans only externally — witches. There are several types: flag-witch, shield-witch, warrior-witch, etc. In the novel there is practically no information about how they differ from each other. The witch-womb stands apart, a creature of practically unprecedented power, which is the only one that can unite disaggregated by nature witches. In any case, witches, even the uninitiated, have some supernatural abilities, and after initiation they increase many times. But an initiated witch usually creates only evil in the understanding of people - she becomes alien to order as such. The society, in order to protect itself from witches, conducts the registration procedure for the uninitiated (put on record). Ordinary people do not even like witnesses who register, and are afraid.
• Inquisitors - a counterweight to the witches. People with supernatural abilities in the service of the law, their task is to protect the civilian population from witches.
• Navka - the undead, returned from the dead people, or something that took their appearance. Navka returns to those who loved them in life and try to kill them, usually in quite clever ways, including by somehow influencing the mind.
• Chugayster - counterweight to navka. People with paranormal abilities who are in the public service and catch navak to kill them with a special rite, a dance.

• Ivga Lys is an uninitiated witch. A young red-haired girl, unsure of anything, especially in her future, which is excusable to her - the society is very bad about people like her.
• Claudius Starge - Grand Inquisitor of the city of Vision. A deeply unhappy, lonely middle-aged man who twice lost his beloved girlfriend (the same one) - the second time he himself passed Dunk on to the scooters. Extremely strong character, cruel, ironic.
• Dokia Sterkh , Dunk - the long-lost beloved girl Claudia, who returned to him as navka, then. Appears only in retrospective scenes - the memories of Claudius, but nevertheless plays a significant role in the narration.

• Literary Award of the magazine "Rainbow" for 1997
• The prize "Zilantcon" - "Big Zilant" (Kazan, 1998 ).
• Award "SFINKS" ("SPHINX"), 2004 , X1 festival of Polish fiction).

• SPb .: ABC, 1997 (ser. "Fantasy").
• M .: Olma-Press, 2000 (ser. "Other Worlds").
• M .: Eksmo-Press, 2003 (ser. "The thread of time").
• M .: Eksmo-Press, 2004 (ser. "Triumvirate").
• M .: Eksmo, 2005 (ser. “Masterpieces of Russian fiction”), in the collection “The urban cycle”