The Aviator

‘Stylistically ornate and compulsively readable… delivered with great aplomb and narrative charm.’

Times Literary Supplement

‘A remarkable novel… Russia’s answer to The Name of the Rose.’

Atticus Lish, author of Preparation for the Next Life

‘Impressive… Laurus cannot be faulted for its ambition or for its poignant humanity. It is a profound, sometimes challenging, meditation on faith, love and life’s mysteries.’

Financial Times

‘In Laurus, Vodolazkin aims directly at the heart of the Russian religious experience and perhaps even at that maddeningly elusive concept that is cherished to the point of cliché: the Russian soul.’

The New Yorker

‘A treasure house of Russian medieval lore and customs… a very clever, self-aware contemporary novel… a quirky, ambitious book.’

Los Angeles Review of Books

‘Vodolazkin explores multifaceted questions of “Russianness” and concludes, like the 19th-century poet Fyodor Tyutchev, that Russia cannot be rationally understood. This is what leads him, with a gradual, but unstoppable momentum, to place faith and the transcendent human spirit at the centre of his powerful worldview.’

Washington Post

‘Love, faith and a quest for atonement are the driving themes of [this] epic, prize-winning Russian novel… With flavours of Umberto Eco and The Canterbury Tales, this affecting, idiosyncratic novel… is an impressive achievement.’

Kirkus

A masterpiece by any standards.’

Huffington Post UK

‘A stroke of brilliant storytelling… a uniquely lavish, multi-layered work that blends an invented hagiography with the rapturous energy of Dostoevsky’s spiritual obsessions.’

Booklist