Laurus is a fable in the form of a biography. It tells of a late 15th century village healer who is powerless to help his beloved, watching her die in childbirth, die in sin — unwed and without having received communion. The protagonist, a desperate man, sets out on an exhausting journey in search of redemption. On this journey of privation and hardship in the service of the people, a journey that spans ages and countries, the hero undergoes a painful personal transformation.

The protagonist sheds his names at every step of this metamorphosis: in the beginning of the story he is Arseny, a gifted young healer in a small village. After the loss of his beloved, he takes her name and becomes Ustin, wandering through the land as a holy fool (called “yurodivy” in the tradition of the Orthodox Church), and displaying miraculous healing powers during the great plague. Laurus is the protagonist’s name when he, by now an old man and revered by the church and the people, returns to his home village to lead the life of a monastic hermit and face his most difficult trial yet.

The narrative mode recalls medieval fables and tales. Rich in detail, the story enumerates the countless wonders and healing miracles displayed by Ustin along his journey. The chronicler carefully fixes all the minutiae of the habits and deeds of the medieval doctor and the holy fool, assembling a gallery of profound portraits. Readers observe Ustin’s patients, his fellow travelers.

Orthodox monks and local governors, and learn about legendary creatures from the strangest medieval bestiaries. The most colorful characters shaping Ustin’s personality on his ascent through the hierarchy of Christian martyrdom follow him on an epic journey to Jerusalem. These include a Franciscan monk, a comic character recalling Chauser’s heroes, and a young scholar with a visionary gift, a clear homage to Umberto Eco’s Baudolino.

This tale, sprawling across time and place, unites carefully researched historical fact with the fantasy of a postmodern space. Vodolazkin baffles his readers with sudden shifts in the manner and pace of the discourse. The reader gets accustomed to the narrative mode of a medieval tale replete with archaic words and anachronisms, when characters exchange modern day vulgarities or switch to bureaucratic jargon. The protagonist kicks aside plastic bottles and litter as he walks through empty streets in villages devastated by the plague. Laurus’s friend and companion, a young scholar from Italy, watches human dramas from the 1960s or 80s in his colorful dreams.

Nevertheless, however meticulously depicted the panorama of the Middle Ages in Vodolazkin’s novel, the author’s message stands in clear contradistinction to that of a historical chronicle. For him, time is irrelevant, while the notion of man’s devotion and self-sacrifice for the sake of love is universal.