Great Fish

"Great Fishes" is an experimental novel about the most traditional and eternal thing. The action takes place in Samaria—and at the same time in a dozen countries; it lasts a few minutes—and more than two thousand years; there are many main characters, yet the central figure is one… It is an attempt to combine hagiographic literature—with a historical chronicle—and to merge fiction with nonfiction; to look at the phenomenon of holiness through the eyes of a historian and at history through the eyes of a saint. An Egyptian monk and a Bulgarian hermit, a Georgian queen and a Russian princess, a Czech bishop and Serbian prisoners… All of them are "great fishes," in some ways similar to one another, no matter what temporal and spatial boundaries separate them. On the pages of the novel, they sit side by side, and their fates—so different—come together into one fate and one endless story.