Michaelmas Day

Before us is a collection of true-to-life stories by writer N. A. Pavlova. These are indeed notes of an eyewitness—because since 1988, until her death in 2015, the author constantly lived near the Optina Pustyn monastery, settling by the walls of the monastery at a time when the holy abode was still in ruins and people from big cities moved there to help restore Optina. In short, this is the author’s personal memories of those times when Optina Pustyn was being revived from ruins—and people’s souls were being revived as well. Is this a book about Russia or a story of Orthodoxy in living faces?