The novel “Where the Throne of Satan Is” covers almost the entire past century. At its center is the family of clergy from a provincial mid-Russian town, Sotsovnikovo: Ioann Bogolyubov, his three sons—Alexander, Peter, and Nikolay—their wives, children, and grandchildren. The revolution splits the family apart. The grandson of the martyr-deceased Father Peter Bogolyubov, Sergey Pavlovich Bogolyubov, a doctor for Moscow’s “ambulance service,” tries to find faith and understand the meaning of his own life. At the same time, he seeks to learn how his grandfather, the priest Peter Bogolyubov—one of the keepers of a seemingly existing Testament of Patriarch Tikhon—lived and how he died. As the grandson gradually gets drawn into searching for the Testament, he realizes what enormous explosive power this document holds.
Journal publications of the novel were recognized with the “Venets” literary prize for 2008.