Laurus

Short Review: Without spoilers, this is a book about a 15th century Russian healer, starting from his time as a boy. It follows him through four stages of his life, where he goes by four names. This is a hard book to describe, I don't really have categories for it. It is by a Russian author, so even though it has all kinds of Christian themes, it isn't what I would call Christian fiction. It treats a lot of the healings as miracles, although not all, and writes them as magical realism. In some ways it could be considered fantasy, but the Christian faith and the relatively accurate historical fiction make that the wrong description too.

My recommendation, if you like well written fiction that has good, challenging themes about what life is all about pick this up. If you are a Christian, although you don't need to be a Christian to enjoy this, I would say pick this up because of how it takes Orthodox Christianity seriously. This is also worth reading because it makes the 15th century just slant enough to see it as both alien to our world, but also relevant to our world.

My not much longer, but slightly different review on my blog is at http://bookwi.se/laurus/