The novel "Cathedral" occupies a special place in Oles Honchar's works.

Coming to the readers in the late sixties, the work immediately found itself in a whirlpool of passions, because it was for the first time in domestic literature that the call for spiritual purification and catholicity, condemnation of national forgetfulness, degenerate careerism and poaching was powerfully and openly voiced. Official circles perceived "Sobor" sharply negatively, because the novel, rejecting the dogmatism of class ideas, affirmed universal, humanistic values.

The Council is a philosophical novel that examines important social and national issues in terms of the eternal humanistic truths that human civilization must be guided by in order to avoid destruction and annihilation.