Lewi's journey - Per Olov Enquist

A hypnotic tale of a moral and spiritual quest and for purity and meaning Lewi's Journey is a powerful fictional account of the two men who built the Swedish Pentecostal movement from a renegade congregation ridiculed for such practices as speaking in tongues, spirit baptism, and left - wing politics, into, at its peak, the third largest religious community within Christendom. A humble preacher and failed writer of social novels, Lewi Pethrus introduced controversial reforms through his tireless pursuit of spiritual and moral purity. His relentless energy won the movement thousands of new converts, but none more important than Sven Lidman, a decadent bohemian poet racked by disastrous affairs and a tortuously failed marriage, who was reborn as a prodigal son and the spiritual conscience of the movement. These two men, allied by their faith and fervour, who guided the movement through unprecedented growth, were ultimately to become bitter enemies, through a schism ignited by a mysterious journey to America undertaken by Pethrus during World War II.