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Or, rather, he was dragging the cross on a wheel, which offended me largely because he wasn’t doing the Christlike physical penance he was advertising.

The book’s three story lines involve a persecuted writer in 1930s Moscow, a gentlemanly Satan who arrives to visit mischief on the literary scene, and the drama between Pontius Pilate and a Christlike prophet in ancient Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the Christlike prophet declares that “all power is violence against people.”

His work, which ranges from poster-like photographic prints of lone sports stars to Christlike wood carvings of a shirtless Justin Bieber, resides in collections at the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate, among others.

“Time Shelter,” his third novel to be translated into English, beat five other shortlisted books for the prize, including Maryse Condé’s “The Gospel According to the New World,” translated from French by Richard Philcox, about a child abandoned in Martinique who grows up to become a Christlike figure.