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Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) was a novelist, poet and playwright known for his honest and affectionate portrayals of Russian serfs in the feudal system of the nineteenth century. Unlike his contemporaries Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy, whose writings focused primarily on church and religion, Turgenev believed in and advocated the need for Russia to Westernize. He criticized the provincial society and political turbulence of his time through sophisticated, focused and often emotional prose. This edition contains «The Torrents of Spring,» an intimate novella that illustrates Turgenev's idealistic ideas about love, and that possibly reflects his own failure in finding romantic love. Also included in this edition, «First Love» is one of Turgenev's most beloved and well-known short works of fiction: a tragic, thought-provoking tale of unrequited love in the social hierarchy. Lastly, «Mumu» is a penetrating look at a feudalist government through the lives of a lonely, old woman lord and her serfs.

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Generally thought to be the work that led to the abolishment of serfdom in Russia, «Sketches from a Hunter's Album (A Sportsman's Sketches)» is a series of short stories, written in 1852, that gained Turgenev widespread recognition for his unique writing style. These stories were the result of Turgenev's observations while hunting all over Russia, particularly on his abusive mother's estate at Spasskoye. A definitive work of the Russian Realist tradition, this collection of sketches unveils the author's insights on the lives of everyday Russians, from landowners and their peasants, to bailiffs and mournful doctors, to unhappy wives and mothers. Turgenev captures their tragedies and triumphs, losses and love in a set of stories that condemned the behavior of the ruling class. Considered subversive writing, Turgenev was confined to his mother's estate, yet his «Sketches» opened the eyes of many people of his time, proving him not only an artist but also a social reformer whose abilities ultimately affected the lives of countless Russians.

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Generally thought to be the work that led to the abolishment of serfdom in Russia, “Sketches from a Hunter’s Album” is a series of short stories, written in 1852, that gained Turgenev widespread recognition for his unique writing style. These stories were the result of Turgenev’s observations while hunting all over Russia, particularly on his abusive mother’s estate at Spasskoye. A definitive work of the Russian Realist tradition, this collection of sketches unveils the author’s insights on the lives of everyday Russians, from landowners and their peasants, to bailiffs and mournful doctors, to unhappy wives and mothers. Turgenev captures their tragedies and triumphs, losses and loves in a set of stories that condemned the behavior of the ruling class. Considered subversive writing, Turgenev was confined to his mother’s estate, yet his “Sketches” opened the eyes of many people of his time, proving him not only an artist but also a social reformer whose abilities ultimately affected the lives of countless Russians. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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In this volume of “First Love and Other Stories” six of Turgenev’s shorter works are collected together. Firstly in “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” we find the story of a dying man who recounts the incidents of his life. Secondly this collection contains the short story “Mumu”, which relates what follows when Gerasim, a deaf and mute man, rescues a drowning dog. Thirdly, in “Acia”, there is the story of an unnamed narrator who recounts, in a remorseful recollection, his love for the illegitimate daughter of a Russian landowner. Fourthly there is the title story of the volume “First Love” the unfortunate tale of a young man’s love for who he ultimately discovers is his father’s mistress. Next in this collection is “A Lear of the Steppes”, a reworking of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” set in the Russian countryside. Lastly there is “The Song of Triumphant Love”, a story of the friendship between two young men, Fabio and Muzzio, and the woman that they both love. In the numerous critical essays that American author Henry James wrote of Ivan Turgenev’s work he claimed “his merit of form is of the first order”. While somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, and Anton Chekhov, Turgenev rightly deserves a place amongst the great Russian writers of the 19th century. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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First published in 1862, Ivan Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” is widely considered to be the author’s greatest literary achievement. It is a novel about the clash of ideologies of two generations. The older generation, the fathers, represents an upper class whose power and influence is fading and giving way to the younger generation, the sons, who represent an increasing objection to the status quo. This conflict is embodied in the characters of Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov and Yevgeny Vasilevich Bazarov, two friends who have meet as students at St. Petersburg University. Arkady has recently graduated and has returned home to his father’s small estate in an outlying province of Russia bringing his friend Yevgeny with him. What follows is uneasiness amongst the family when Arkady and Yevgeny’s nihilistic views begin to emerge and are shown in conflict with the older generations more traditional views. “Fathers and Sons” is a brilliant work that captures the tension that existed among generations and class in the years leading up to the revolution in Russia. This edition follows the translation of Constance Garnett, includes an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, and a biographical afterword.

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Considered one of Ivan Turgenev's finest works, Fathers and Sons was the first of the great nineteenth-century Russian novels to achieve international renown. A stirring tale of generational conflict during a period of social revolution, it vividly depicts the friction between liberal and conservative thought and the rise of the radical new philosophy of nihilism. Set in Russia during the 1860s against the backdrop of the liberation of the serfs, the story concerns the clash of older aristocrats with the new democratic intelligentsia.The impressionable young student Arkady Kirsanoff arrives home in the company of his friend Bazarov, a cynical biologist. Arkady's father and uncle, already distressed by the upheaval of the peasants, grow increasingly irritated at Bazarov's outspoken nihilism and his ridicule of the conventions of state, church, and home. The young friends, bored by the rustic life of the Kirsanoff estate, venture off to the provincial capital in search of amusement. There they encounter both romance and alienation.This inexpensive edition of a literary landmark affords students and general readers the opportunity to savor a timeless masterpiece of world literature.

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Turgenev (1818-1883) tends to be seen in Chekhov’s shadow, yet his plays pre-date Chekhov’s work by nearly half a century. A Month in the Country is Turgenev’s acknowledged masterpiece. Includes the plays; A Month in the Country , Stony Broke , One of the Famil y, The Bachelor , Lunch at His Excellency's and A Provincial Lady .

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'I've come across some stories in my time. The things people tell you when they think they're on the brink…' A country doctor recounts a story to an aspiring Russian novelist. The tale is unexpected, short and bittersweet, rather like its subject: a love affair between the doctor and his dying patient, the beautiful and cultured Alexandra Andreyevna. Thrown together by her condition, they find a love imbued with an honesty and an urgency that most would find unbearable. But this young woman's life is particularly fragile and in his desperate bid to cure her the doctor unwittingly prescribes the most dangerous drug of all. The Country Doctor was first published in the Russian literary magazine The Contemporary in the late 1840s. It was one of many tales which would later comprise The Sportsman's Notebook . Simon Day dramatises this enchanting story of frustrated love, bringing the elegance of Turgenev's prose to life in a new way.

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Based on Ivan Turgenev's novel of the same name, Frank J. Morlock's new play clearly dramatizes the societal divisions in mid-nineteenth-century Russia, deftly contrasting the defenders of the old regime with the younger generation of no-nonsense nihilists who will eventually succeed them. Nicolai and Pavel represent the older values (Nicolai softly, Pavel somewhat rigidly), while the two youths, Arkady (softly) and Bazarov (gruffly), make the case for change. In the end, Pavel and Bazarov fight an inconclusive duel–but the heightened animosity between generations yet remains, forecasting the civil war that will eventually overwhelm Russia fifty years later. The parallels between that time and today are striking. An absolutely riveting drama.

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"Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English."—The New YorkerOne week before her thirtieth birthday, the simple life of dutiful wife and mother Natalya is upended when the arrival of her son's charming new tutor unleashes a whirlwind of love, lust, and jealousy. This revelatory new translation by renowned playwright Richard Nelson along with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky—the foremost contemporary translators of classic Russian literature, including the best-selling Oprah's Book Club selection, Anna Karenina—marks the second of a series of translations of important Russian plays to be published over the next ten years.Richard Nelson's many plays include Rodney's Wife, Goodnight Children Everywhere, Drama Desk–nominated Franny's Way and Some Americans Abroad, Tony Award–nominated Two Shakespearean Actors, and James Joyce's The Dead (with Shaun Davey), for which he won a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. His The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country will be published by Theatre Communications Group in early 2014.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have produced acclaimed translations of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their translations of The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina won the 1991 and 2002 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prizes. Pevear, a native of Boston, and Volokhonsky, of St. Petersburg, are married to each other and live in Paris.

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