Other editions of book Fathers & Sons

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 is printed on premium acid-free paper, follows the translation of Constance Garnett, and includes an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky.

"['Fathers and Sons'] stirs the mind… because everything is permeated with the most complete and most touching sincerity." —Dmitry Pisarev"[Turgenev] was of the stuff of which glories are made." —Henry James"Turgenev is much the most difficult of the Russians to translate because his style is the most beautiful." —Constance Garnett"What an amazing language!" —Anton ChekhovConsidered Ivan Turgenev’s greatest work, “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.

Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons explores generational differences and their tragic consequences. The story centers around Arkady and Bazarov, two young men who return home from college to a world that has remained static. They have changed but must now redefine old relationships, both their friendship with one another and their relationships with their fathers. The main conflict of the novel is between the nihilistic Bazarov, who espouses a strictly materialistic attitude toward life, and Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, an uncle of Arkady’s, who upholds the aristocratic tradition in the face of Bazarov’s ridicule. Fathers and Sons originally aroused controversy in Russia, with both radicals and conservatives disturbed by the portrait of Bazarov - an energetic, cynical, and self-assured nihilist who repudiates the romanticism of his elders.

Fathers and Sons, also translated more literally as Fathers and Children, 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.

When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith." Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when it was published in 1862 and continues today to seem as fresh and outspoken as it did to those who first encountered its nihilistic hero.