Ivan Turgenev

Peter Carson's new translation of Turgenev's vivid and honest tale of generational conflict. When Arkady Petrovich comes home from college, his father finds his eager, naive son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father by...

Sketches from a Hunter's Album, Turgenev's first major prose work, is a series of twenty-five sketches that capture the observations and anecdotes of the author during his travels through Russia, fuelled by his passion for hunting. His album is filled with moving insights into the lives of those he encounters—peasants and landowners, doctors and bailiffs, neglected wives and bereft mothers....

Turgenev’s first major publication, Memoirs of a Hunter is a series of tales based largely on the author’s own experiences while hunting on his mother’s estate of Spasskoye, where he became aware of the iniquities of the system of serfdom and the privations and indignities suffered by the Russian peasantry. Told from the perspective of a dispassionate, observing narrator, the...

The English rendition of the title of this novel has been problematic since the book's publication in 1862. In his prefatory note to the Second Edition, Katz explains his decision to return to the original title, the one preferred by the author himself: Ottsy i deti, literally Fathers and Children. The novel is accompanied by a rich selection of Turgenev's...

An icon of Russian literature, Turgenev was able to contain the narrative sweep of a novel in a single short story. His protagonists experience the joy and painful turbulence of first love, the thrilling adventures of youth, and the layered reflections of maturity. His great skill is to make his readers feel alongside these characters, rendering their complex interiorities, whether...

Turgenev's masterpiece about the conflict between generations is as fresh, outspoken, and exciting today as it was when it was first published in 1862. The controversial portrait of Bazarov, the energetic, cynical, and self-assured nihilist who repudiates the romanticism of his elders, shook Russian society. Indeed, the image of humanity liberated by science from age-old conformities and prejudices is one...

Little Black Classics - the new series to celebrate Penguin's 80th anniversary No, no, I've got your word for it, I've got to die ... you promised me ... you told me ... Turgenev's accounts of hunting in rural Russia, and the extraordinary characters he meets there. Introducing Little Black Classics - 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black...