ISBN Love and Youth book English Paperback 224 pages

From the most romantic of the Russian greats, an enthralling selection of short stories and novellas

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 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 novellaFirst Lovealongside 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.

Ivan Turgenev was born to an aristocratic family in 1818. In 1852, he wrote an obituary for Gogol for the Saint Petersburg Gazette. Banned by the censor in Saint Petersburg, it was nevertheless published in Moscow, leading to Turgenev being…