The Enchanted Wanderer(1872-1873)

This novella, more like a hagiography, is dedicated to the life of a man named Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin. In his early youth, he accidentally causes the death of a monk, who later appears to the young man in a dream and informs him that his mother had "promised him to God" and that he should enter a monastery…

Readers did not immediately embrace Nikolai Leskov's work. The public reconsidered it only after Soviet writer Maxim Gorky praised him, calling him a "magician of words". In 2009, Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin wrote an opera of the same name based on ‘The Wanderer’, for which he was awarded the Russian ‘Golden Mask’ theater award.

Translated by Alexander G. Paschkof, Publisher McBride, 1924