Memoirs of a Provincial Priest: A Novel

The genre of this wonderful book goes far beyond the novel: it is metaphysical, philosophical, and mystical, but primarily it is the life of Russian Orthodox Church shown from the inside, through the eyes of a man ordained into its concealed depths. Perhaps it is for the first time in Russian literature that the chief positive hero of the novel is an orthodox priest whose heroic life is crowned by martyrdom. The book reveals the historical roots of bolshevism, its antihuman essence and historical utopianism. To exemplify inalienable, God-given human rights (chief among them freedom of conscience) the author has chosen the deeply personal genre of the diary-novel. Following the tradition of Dostoevsky, Igoumen Ioann succeeded in combining acute plot with almost polyphonic writing. It is not simply an ideological novel, but a novel-mystery, in which is visible the unlimited spiritual.