The Lord's Summer. Holidays. Joys. Sorrows

Ivan Sergeyevich Shmelev (1873-1950) — a Russian writer and publicist, twice a nominee for the Nobel Prize; nicknamed the «Orthodox writer» for his numerous texts on the spirituality of the Russian people. While in emigration, «not for a moment in... his spiritual fire does he cease to think of Russia and suffer from its misfortunes».

The novel «The Lord's Summer» can rightly be called the pinnacle of the writer and Orthodox thinker Ivan Shmelev's work. The book, which was written from 1933 to 1948, consists of three parts: «Holidays», «Joys», and «Sorrows».
In this autobiographical work, the life of a patriarchal merchant family is depicted through the eyes of a small boy. The Russian way of life is described through the church liturgical year, starting from Great Lent, and family traditions. It is a narrative about the old Moscow way of life as seen through the eyes of a child, and about the world of the Russian man, whose life is permeated with the Orthodox spirit and filled with Christian faith.
The author himself wrote about the book «The Lord's Summer»: «In it, I show the face of Holy Russia, which I carry in my heart... Russia, which peered into my childhood soul».