Pilgrimage. Novels and stories

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev (1873-1950) is a writer who is entirely turned to the past, mostly to his happy childhood years, when his Orthodox soul was formed. His novel “Pilgrimage,” in which he describes a pilgrimage to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, is... a stylistic pearl of Russian prose, written by a mature master on behalf of a kind and simple-minded six-year-old boy, immersed in an atmosphere of universal love and inexhaustible religious joy in front of the generous gifts of God and the beautiful by the magic of the Divine world he created. On the pages of the book, the author recreates and perpetuates instantaneous and unsteady images of the passing past, generously drawing them from the treasury of his memory, so that readers can feel the former beautiful world with all their senses.
The collection also includes selected stories, many of which are imbued with Divine joy. In them, I. S. Shmelev shows the Christian essence of the Russian people. He believes that, despite all fatal circumstances, adversities, hardships of life, evil human intentions, the people will sooner or later find the sought-after “soul of the homeland”, find the invisible city of Kitezh and finally find long-awaited happiness.
For children of senior school age.