The life of Mikhail Prishvin, a careless and impudent student expelled from the Yelets gymnasium following the report of his teacher V.V. Rozanov, an insecure young man, a Marxist who was imprisoned for revolutionary views, a student at the University of Leipzig, a naturalist writer and researcher of sectarianism, who earned the condescending attention of Z.N. Gippius, D.S. Merezhkovsky and A.A. Blok, a villager who said a lot of bitter words about the Russian village and the peasants, and was finally favored by the authorities as an order bearer, is as interesting and colorful as his thoughts about her are deep and meaningful. The writer devoted his life to the search for happiness, he wrote his books about happiness - and life did not deceive him. This is the first detailed biography of Prishvin, written by the writer and literary critic Alexei Varlamov. The author shows his hero in all the complexity of his character and fate, removing the textbook gloss from the amazing life of one of the greatest Russian thinkers of the 20th century.