About the book: 2013 / Once upon a time, in time immemorial, the village of Buyan was located on an inaccessible island, as local legend says. Now this is the bank of a taiga river, a strange wilderness into which you cannot lure sensible people - there are “birds without a voice, flowers without a smell, women without a heart.” The inhospitable village is tightly protected from the outside world - by the owner’s ancient way of life and the strict precepts of antiquity. And only the unexpected appearance of an urban rogue in the village introduces discord into the established way of life. The robber free people and sacrifice, the gloomy provincial habit of evading innovations and the tendency to lynching - all these contradictions of Russian life are woven into a tight knot of tragedy here, where together, in their own way, decide how to protect the village from the fate of Kondopoga and Sagra. And only the closeness of a natural person to a miracle brings the action of the novel from a series of terrible events to the light.