If you are looking for contemporary, Christian, literary fiction, look no further...

If you are looking for contemporary, Christian, literary fiction, look no further. This book was written by an academic scholar of the Medieval, and takes place in Medieval Russia (among other times). The author is right up there with McCarthy, Gass and Krasznahorkai.

It was written in 2013, but only translated in 2015. The book uses Church Slavonic for quotes of the Bible and Liturgy, and to convey that, the English translation uses Middle English (which standardized middle English spelling, as you see with contemporary editions of Chaucer in Middle English) for Church Slavonic passages.

This is truly a beautiful book, here is from a review by the American Conservative

>What kind of novel makes you want to enter into contemplative prayer after reading from its pages? I’ve never heard of one. But Laurus is that kind of novel. It induces an awareness of the radical enchantment of the world, and of the grandeur of the soul’s journey through this life toward God. It is so strange and mystical and … well, to call a novel “holy” is too much, but Laurus conjures on every page an awareness of holiness that is without precedence in my experience as a reader. Holiness illuminates this novel like an icon lamp.

>By saying that, I fear that I will make the novel sound pious and devotional. It very much is not. This is an earthy novel, filled with the sounds, smells, violence, superstition, and fanaticism of the Middle Ages. The achievement of Vodolazkin, who is a medieval historian by vocation, is to make this faraway world come vividly to life, and to saturate it with mystical Orthodox Christianity, such that even the leaves of the trees are enchanted. Most Americans who read Laurus will take it as a work with a strong current of magical realism; the handful of us American readers who worship in the Eastern Christian tradition will recognize it as simply Orthodoxy, where the border between wonder-working and everyday life is porous.

I don't want to spoil the book for those who haven't read it, I'll only say it is the journey of a man from a grave sinner to becoming holy.

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Prose sample

>up there with YeCarthy
Go suck on a pirozhok, tovarish.

I'm not Russian

>6,948th year since the Creation of the world
lel
I'll probably read it because the themes and subject matter interest me, but you are shilling way hard, man.

If you want a contemporary literary work that explores the mindset of the Middle Ages, this is the one. It doesn't romanticize them, neither does it demonize them. Rather it humanizes them. If you're religious, the book will be very spiritual to you, and if you're not, you can enjoy it like you would Borges.

What's the relationship between the Vodolazkin, McCarthy, Gass, and Krasznahorkai? I've only read Blood Meridian.

A new school of literature that is superceding the style of writers like Joseph McElroy and William S. Burroughs. Instead of focusing on the psychology of the individual human being, it is more focused on the relationship of human beings.. Instead of the "individual against society", it's more the individual's relationship with his fellow, or, barring that, the individual's incompleteness in being apart from his fellows.

Is there somewhere I can read more about this? Sounds like metamodernism.

It's more a throwback to older ways of thought (though without dropping certain postmodern ideas). McCarthy, for instance, is very influenced by the King James Bible. In fact, the lack of quotation marks in the KJB is why they are seen as obtrusive more and more (none of the named authors use them).