Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin

Laurus is available from Amazon

Vodolazkin's historical novel is set in 15th century Russia. "It is a time of plague and pestilence, and a young healer, skilled in the arts of herbs and remedies,  finds himself overcome with grief and guilt when he fails to save the one he holds closest to his heart. Leaving behind his village, his possessions and his name, he sets out on a quest for redemption, penniless and alone." from the front inside-flap

This novel, like Tikhon's Everyday  Saints, vividly portraits life in Holy Russia. Arseny is a fictional character, but the events of his life, his very person, were the spiritual everyday reality in medieval Rus. I just began to read Laurus and I am hooked.

This work is getting great reviews. It is already a best seller in Russia, having won some prestigious awards. Ken Kalfus, writing for The New Yorker, comments;

"A new novel by the Russian medievalist Eugene Vodolazkin, “Laurus,” recreates this fervent landscape and suggests why the era, its holy men, and the forests and fields of Muscovy retain such a grip on the Russian imagination. Vodolazkin’s hero-mystic Arseny is a protagonist extrapolated from the little that is known about the lives and deeds of the famous holy men. Born in 1440, he’s raised by his herbalist grandfather Christofer near the grounds of the Kirillov Monastery, about three hundred miles north of Moscow. He becomes a renowned medicine man, faith healer, and prophet who “pelted demons with stones and conversed with angels.” He makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He takes on new names, depending on how he will next serve God. The people venerate his humble spirituality. In “Laurus,” Vodolazkin aims directly at the heart of the Russian religious experience and perhaps even at that maddeningly elusive concept that is cherished to the point of cliché: the Russian soul."