Books with author Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Bazarov - a gifted, impatient, and caustic young man - has journeyed from school to the home of his friend Arkady Kirsanov. But soon Bazarov's outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements that will utterly transform the Kirsanov household and reflect the changes taking place all across nineteenth-century Russia.

When first published in 1862, this novel of a divided Russia, with peasants set against masters and fathers set against sons, caused great outrage. But its enduring legacy of social insight and conscience mixed with drama has given it universal appeal. Written about a "superfluous" man who was trapped between ideologies in 19th century Russia, when the young "nihilists" were at odds with the old-line liberals, “Fathers and Sons” is relevant in any age. There are always going to be clashes between generations and between those who hope for the "destruction" of an old edifice for an only partially imagined design for a new one. Ivan Turgenev presents us with perhaps the most truthful representation of this timeless, generational conflict. Of the greats in Russian literature--Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Pushkin, Turgenev gets his point across best of all. "Fathers and Sons" ranks with Turgenev’s "Sketches from a Hunter's Album" as one of the most perfectly written and deeply moving books ever written. A reader with a good knowledge of Russia will not fail to appreciate this novel, and may not even be able to put it down, not so much from being riveted to an adventurous plot, but from being captivated by the sublime, marvelous beauty of Turgenev's prose. "Fathers and Sons" is a very powerful book, eye-opening and profoundly sad, which every reader will appreciate. The art involved in creating “Fathers and Sons” is what makes it a truly amazing and valuable piece of literature. Each character has characteristics that are very human. The thoughts, ideas, and ideals of the very different characters are the entirety of the plot. Turgenev does such an incredible job of creating conflict, that he doesn't need to place the characters in any action in order to attract the reader. A must read for any fan of Russian literature!

A nobleman and landowner named Ivan Lavretsky returns to Russia after leaving his faithless wife in France, only to fall in love with a beautiful and pious cousin, Elizaveta Kalitin.When Ivan learns by a newspaper article that his wife is suspected to have died, the way seems clear for him to find happiness with Liza. But her mother, Marya, is much taken with her daughter's other suitor, the cultured Panshin.This is a remarkably thoughtful and unassuming story, but it weaves a wonderful spell. The characters are undemonstrative, very little happens, yet by some quiet magic it manages to be very touching.Ivan and Liza both suffer unconventional, though different, upbringings and educations, neither of which seem to have prepared them for the world very well, dignified as they are.A sad and understated tale.

FATHERS AND SONS was the most closely studied of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev's works in the Soviet high school curriculum. An inadvertent political agenda favorite, juxtaposing two generations, "the fathers," or the fading aristocracy, and "the sons," or the new fresh blood of the middle class and the nihilists, the novel seemed a perfect vehicle for portraying the brewing unrest of the pre-revolutionary era, and introduced the character of Bazarov -- the spirited nihilist who was seen as a brilliant idealistic rebel, the new kind of perfect man who rejected the old notions of class and came to disrupt nobility's status quo. Growing up, Turgenev witnessed much class injustice in Russia, and his themes reflect his overwhelming concern with the suffering of the poor and the voiceless serfs. But FATHERS AND SONS is not merely a convenient socio-political piece; Turgenev is a lyrical romantic. At the novel's heart lies the ultimately tragic human story of Bazarov's flippant kiss of a servant girl and the bizarre tension it causes in a cozy country gentry household where he is a guest. An important period classic.

VIRGIN SOIL by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) is his last and longest novel. In it he finally says everything yet unsaid on the subject of social change, idealism and yet futility of revolutions, serfs and peasants, and the upper classes. The hero, Nezhdanov -- the disillusioned young son of a nobleman -- and the Populist movement are young idealists working to bridge the gap between the common people and the nobility, and through them Turgenev works out his own troubled thoughts about social reform and tradition, vitality and stagnation. The ideas of gradual reform shown here are eventually to be supplanted by the extremism of the Russian Revolution -- but that is yet to come.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.