The life of Mikhail Prishvin (1873–1954), a careless and daring student expelled from the Yelets gymnasium on the report of his teacher V.V. Rozanov, an insecure young man, a Marxist who ended up in prison for revolutionary views, a student at the University of Leipzig, a writer - a naturalist and researcher of sectarianism, who earned the condescending attention of Z. N. Gippius, D. S. Merezhkovsky and A. A. Blok, a village resident who said many bitter words about the Russian village and peasants, and finally, an order bearer favored by the authorities, is equally interesting and multicolored, no matter how deep and meaningful his thoughts about her are. 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.