Day Train, or All Angels Were Humans

1979. The hero of Leonid Bezhin's novel is traveling to Leningrad to scatter his deceased son's ashes over the Gulf of Finland as per his will. At the boat waiting at the dock, he meets… the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. The Dalai Lama reveals to him that his deceased son was a great Bodhisattva, destined to save the suffering in Russia. In the novel, as well as in the stories of Leonid Bezhin, a master of modern prose, there are many other extraordinary, magical, and captivating events. According to Bezhin's characters, Leningrad is a Buddhist city.