Description

Book Synopsis
A brilliant new translation of a perennial favorite of Russian literature
 
The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests. Chronicling his unforgettable adventures in the Caucasus involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers, this classic tale of alienation influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov in Lermontov's own century, and finds its modern-day counterparts in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, and the films and plays of Neil LaBute.

Trade Review
"Natasha Randall's English, in her new translation, has exactly the right degree of loose velocity. . . . (Nabokov's version, the best-known older translation, is a bit more demure than Randall's, less savage.)" —James Wood, London Review of Books

"[A] smart, spirited new translation." —The Boston Globe

"One of the most vivid and persuasive portraits of the male ego ever put down on paper." —Neil LaBute, from the Foreword

A Hero of Our Time Penguin Classics

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    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Tue 28 Jul 2026.

    A Paperback / softback by Mikhail Lermontov, Natasha Randall

    10 in stock

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      Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 27/08/2009
      ISBN13: 9780143105633, 978-0143105633
      ISBN10: 0143105639

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      A brilliant new translation of a perennial favorite of Russian literature
       
      The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests. Chronicling his unforgettable adventures in the Caucasus involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers, this classic tale of alienation influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov in Lermontov's own century, and finds its modern-day counterparts in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, and the films and plays of Neil LaBute.

      Trade Review
      "Natasha Randall's English, in her new translation, has exactly the right degree of loose velocity. . . . (Nabokov's version, the best-known older translation, is a bit more demure than Randall's, less savage.)" —James Wood, London Review of Books

      "[A] smart, spirited new translation." —The Boston Globe

      "One of the most vivid and persuasive portraits of the male ego ever put down on paper." —Neil LaBute, from the Foreword

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