The paper takes under scrutiny Michael Köhlmeier’s novel Abendland, which portrays the history of the twentieth century in the form of oral family stories based on the biography of the main protagonist of the work, Carl Jacob Candoris, written down by his godson Sebastian Lukasser. Authentic historical events and actual characters are intermingled with fictitious figures and events. The article poses questions on individual and collective memory as well as the significance of oral history in the life of an individual.

The article discusses two books: a fairy tale novel The Stolen City. 1941 (2017) by Yuliya Yakovleva and a graphic novel Survilo (2019) by Olga Lavrent’yeva. These are projects different in terms of genre and form, resulting from the sense of insufficiency of the methods used so far to talk about the blockade of Leningrad, going beyond the official discourse of historical politics. The works were created by the female representatives of the generation, for whom the reference point in writing about the siege is not the reality of their own biographical experience, but historical sources and the accounts of others. This connected the reflection on the content of the books with the issues of the functioning of individual memory, postmemory and collective memory. The basic task is to check how the authors “tell the siege”, what presentation strategy they choose, what goals it helps to achieve.