Lindisfarne Press is proud to publish the first English translation of this masterpiece of contemporary Russian spiritual literature, a work in the tradition of Dante and Blake -- truly a book for the new millennium. Daniil Andreyev, the son of a famous pre-revolutionary writer, was born in 1906, in Berlin. He was brought up by an aunt, the wife of a Moscow physician. Coming of age in the new Russia of Marxist-Leninist atheist materialism, Daniil Andreyev recognized the incompatibility of his gifts and propensities with the values ruling society. What were his gifts? And organic, innate religiosity; a visionary capacity to explore alternate realities; and passionate love of history as the living current through which all lives flow. Andreyev earned his living as a typeface designer while, secretly, by night, writing poetry and prose that could not be published. During these years he spent much of his spare time in nature, communicating with nature spirits, the elements, and the being of the earth itself. Conscripted in 1942 but, because of a weak constitution, assigned to the army as a non-combatant, he entered Leningrad by way of Lake Ladoga, burying the dead in mass graves as he recited funeral prayers over them. Returning to Moscow after the War, he resumed his clandestine novel writing. Reading aloud from this work, the authorities suspected him of creating an anti-Soviet group and perhaps even planning the assassination of Stalin. As a result, in 1947, he and his wife were arrested. After a lengthy investigation, he was condemned to 25 years in prison, she to a labor camp for the same duration. Everything written before the arrest was destroyed. In prison, however, his visionary capacities were enhanced. A new stage of my metahistorical and transphysical cognition began he wrote. The long hours of metahistorical illumination became more frequent. Long rows of nights were transformed into continuous contemplation and comprehension . Andreyev was freed in 195