Other editions of book Fathers & Sons

Might be regarded as the first wholly modern novel in Russian Literature (Gogol's Dead Souls, another main contender, is sometimes referred to as a poem or epic in prose as in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy). The novel introduces a dual character study, as seen with the gradual breakdown of Bazarov's and Arkady's nihilistic opposition to emotional display, especially in the case of Bazarov's love for Madame Odintsova and Fenichka. This prominent theme of character duality and deep psychological insight would exert an influence on most of the great Russian novels to come, most obviously echoed in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The novel is also the first Russian work to gain prominence in the Western world, eventually gaining the approval of well established novelists Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry James, proving that Russian literature owes much to Ivan Turgenev.

One of the most controversial Russian novels ever written, Fathers and Sons dramatizes the volcanic social conflicts that divided Russia just before the revolution, pitting peasants against masters, traditionalists against intellectuals, and fathers against sons. It is also a timeless depiction of the ongoing clash between generations. When a young graduate returns home, he is accompanied—much to his father and uncles discomfort—by a strange friend who does not acknowledge any authority and does not accept any principle on faith. Bazarov is a nihilist, representing the new class of youthful radical intelligentsia that would come to overthrow the Russian aristocracy and its values. Uncouth and forthright in his opinions, Turgenevs hero is nonetheless susceptible to love and, by that fact, doomed to unhappiness.

Fathers and Sons ;is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, and vies with A Nest of Gentlefolk for the repute of being his best novel. Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg and returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. His father, Nikolai, gladly receives the two young men at his estate, called Maryino, but Nikolai's brother, Pavel, soon becomes upset by the strange new philosophy called "nihilism" which the young men, especially Bazarov advocate.