Rights sold: Russia - VAGRIUS, ARSIS BOOKS, Serbia - UTOPIA
Through a patchwork of letters and second hand memoirs, the novel follows the lives of two brothers in the first half of the twentieth century. One of the brothers, Fyodor, is a bishop-turned-religious-sectarian. The other brother, Nikolai, is obsessed with the idea of reuniting Russian society in the years after the Russian Civil War. As Raising Lazarus progresses, Nikolai becomes interested in esoteric doctrines that promise to transcend ideological conflicts. The reader soon learns through letters written by Nikolai, that he believes that Christ must return to Earth for salvation to be bestowed on Russia and we see a blending of the Christian and Bolshevik expectations for an “end of history.” Nikolai then begins to believe that only truly terrible human conditions can cause the arrival of the Messiah. This time, Sharov’s mixing of religious and communist beliefs was praised by critics because of Sharov’s clever use of symbolism. Raising Lazarus has sold over 10,000 copies in Russian.