Monk Lazar (Viktor Vasilievich Afanasyev) is a member of the Union of Writers of Russia since 1971. He is the author of many books - poetry, prose, literary and historical, works of a spiritual nature; among them are ten books about Optina Pustyn. His special focus is stories, poems and fairy tales for youth (all in the Orthodox spirit). In the book about the Venerable Optina Elder Nektarios (Tikhonov), preference is given to documents. Together with the author's text, they vividly recreate the image of the great seer and prayer book. The text retains certain writing features proposed by the author.