Description
Book SynopsisAn 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 nobility or serf, in these stories charged with a profound social conscience. This collection, in a lyrical new translation by Nicolas Slater, places Turgenev's great novella First Love alongside a selection of his classic stories. From the evocative rural scenes of 'Bezhin Meadow' and 'Rattling Wheels', to the pathos and humanity of 'The District Doctor' and 'Biryuk', these are stories to be lingered over.
Trade Review • 'Turgenev's Russia is but a canvas on which the incomparable artist of humanity lays his colours and his forms in the great light and the free air of the world' - Joseph Conrad
• 'He was the stuff of which glories are made' - Henry James
• 'Turgenev's achievement lies in how he succeeded, in spite of himself, his country and his time, in exempting his work from public duty. This has given it that unnameable quality that makes every sentence true, every silence trustworthy' - Guardian
• 'There are two masters of seeing in Russian literature: Tolstoy and Turgenev' - V. S. Pritchett
