About the book: 2023 / For a recent student, and since February 1942, front-line translator Elena Kagan, the martyr city of Rzhev became “fate, a literary name, unsurpassed pain." From the records on the go at that time, living impressions heard from soldiers, from old village women and children, from captured Germans, the story “Close Approaches” was born. “Turned Heat” is the result of post-war reflections: the writer Elena Rzhevskaya constantly returned to that experience, to the fate people met at that time. She was sensitive to how the memory of the war is being “nationalized”, how attempts to comprehend the experience that do not correspond to the official ritual are squeezed out of the public field. This is evidenced by the pages of the 1962 diary (published for the first time), interviews and essays that complement the collection..