Getting Caught Up: Pandemic-Era Reading Potpourri

Books have been one of my main sources of comfort and calm during these long pandemic months: ordering them to keep a good variety on the shelves, reading them, thinking about them. Feeling more distracted than usual – by the combination of news, horrible circumstances around us, and long hours keeping up with my usual work – initially meant I had a hard time reading at all, later meant I read happily but didn’t retain much, and now seems to mean I do very, very well with books I love but am more eager than ever to set aside books that don’t suck me in. I’ve also been reading more in English than usual, thanks in part to committing, as I mentioned in a previous post, to a very slow reading of In Search of Lost Time. I’m enjoying it a lot, both for the novel and for a commitment that lends stability. I’m glad there’s still nearly a year left.

After all these months (I’m not counting them), my list of thoroughly absorbing Russian books is relatively small – Belyaev’s rather silly Professor Dowell’s Head (previous post), Buksha’s heartfelt Churov and Churbanov (previous post), Inga Kuznetsova’s wondrous Промежуток, which I’ll write about soon, and a couple other books I’ll mention below. The list is short in large part because I haven’t found this year’s Big Book finalists to be overwhelmingly, er, rousing. I’ve been happily reading some upcoming releases, though, and will write more about those later. For now, here’s a bit about some of the books I’ve mentioned in “Up Next” over the pandemic months but haven’t written about (and won't write about) in any great depth.

I feel particularly sorry that Aleksei Polyarinov’s Центр тяжости (The Center of Gravity) fell through the cracks of both my bookshelves and my mind. I recall that I was reading it just as the pandemic was starting to take hold in the U.S. – back then I was planning on a three-day trip to Duke University and considering using the beginning of the novel for a translation workshop – so my reading of The Center of Gravity straddled the before/after line, skewing my reading and fogging my memories considerably. Sometimes, though, foggy outlines speak more to me than sharply focused memories. Polyarinov’s descriptions of childhood are wonderful, with boyish hijinks, a lost lake, and family quirks emerging from the fog as compelling thematic outlines; the second part of the book, which earned it a “cyberpunk” label from some, interested me less, though it’s more distinct and memorable with its descriptions of tyranny and technology, not to mention brotherly differences. I also noted down a few references that speak to the novel’s magpie character: Costa-Gavras’s Missing, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Don Quixote. All in all, my quibbles over things like the slightly hectic blend of genres and references are minor: The Center of Gravity made for entertaining and affecting reading.

I read Alexander Grin’s “Quarantine” in Fandango and Other Stories, translated by Bryan Karetnyk around that same time. “Quarantine” is a short story and short stories spoil easily, so I won’t say much other than that it’s not about medical quarantine, though it is about how solitude and apartness can save a life. The main character may not be a very sympathetic person but Bryan’s translation is lush, lovely, and full of life. I’m looking forward to reading more of Fandango.

One of the biggest disappointments of my early pandemic reading was Ivan Turgenev’s On the Eve, which Wikipedia sums up just fine, thank you, relieving me of the duty. Yes, I finished and yes, I’m glad I’d saved it for a difficult time, though neither Turgenev’s writing nor my reading felt especially inspired, at least if compared to Fathers and Sons, Rudin, or Nest of the Gentry. Then again, On the Eve made for odd pandemic reading: one character falls ill with something that sounded suspiciously COVID-19esque, inspiring marginalia like “sick like COVID-19, ой!” and “evidently not so contagious because all visit” and “symptoms CV-19-ish and linger.” The novel’s highlight is Elena who makes her own decisions and loves nature (including insects and frogs) so much it makes her father jealous.

There are also two books I started some time ago and haven’t yet finished, though I keep working on them after long work days: Aleksandr Stesin’s Нью-йоркский обход (New York Rounds) and Tatyana Pletneva’s Пункт третий (Point Three). New York Rounds is a graceful and almost meditative series of vignettes written by a young doctor working in New York City hospitals. I’m sure my past work as a medical interpreter enhances my appreciation for New York Rounds – I noted “apparent lack of hosp. interps?!” early on – but I also enjoy Stesin’s portrayals of colleagues, snapshots of New York (the sad beauty of the early-morning Bronx), and mentions of literature, which include noting that an audiobook of Proust featured a reader with “a strong Odessa accent.” (This was before I started on ISOLT!) Although I couldn’t bear to read New York Rounds when New York’s COVID-19 cases peaked in the spring, I’ve returned this fall and will keep going. Point Three is an entirely different kind of book: fiction about, well, Soviet dissidents in 1979-1981. Pletneva establishes several plotlines that intersect, offering up very human characters plus a sense of realistic absurdity. And/or absurd realism. This book is also a bit hectic but it’s well-organized. Better yet, given, well, the circumstances, it’s also so vivid – settings include apartments, a courtroom, and a prison camp – that I find it easy to set aside and return to without feeling any loss of continuity. I’m about halfway through and find it almost mysteriously enjoyable.

Up Next: Inga Kuznetsova’s Промежуток, which I confess I may be afraid to write about since I enjoyed it tremendously and don’t want to overanalyze.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: I received a review copy of the Grin book from the Russian Library and Bryan is a wonderful friend and colleague; the Russian Library is one of my publishers, too. Since I mentioned that, I’ll add that I have several other Russian Library titles waiting for more attention: Woe from Wit (Griboedov, Hulick), The Nose and Other Stories (Gogol, Fusso), and Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow (Radishchev, Kahn/Reyfman). They all look great, though I’m especially looking forward to Radishchev… my fascination with eighteenth-century Russia never left me.

Live from Moscow Maine: Read Russia Winners

I’d planned to post a list of the winners of the Read Russia Prize while I was still in Moscow: I even set up a post with all the shortlisted names and titles, figuring I’d just work from there, deleting those who didn’t win (including myself), and be done in three minutes. Becoming part of the news, which is now old, though, made me want to post more than just a list of winners. First off, here’s the list:

• Joaquín Fernández-Valdés and Alba for Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (Spain)
• Selma Ancira and Fondo de Cultura Económica for short stories by twentieth-century writers (Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Blok, Gumilev, Mandelstam, Bunin, Bulgakov, and Berberova) (Mexico)
• Lisa Hayden and Oneworld Publications for Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus (US and UK)
• Claudia Scandura and Gattomerlino for Sergei Gandlevsky’s Rust and Yellow (Italy)

Joaquín, Lisa, Claudia, Selma; photo by Anatoli Stepanenko.

There are lots of great things about the Read Russia Prize but I particularly like the fact that it recognizes translators and publishers. And, I admit, that the ceremony takes place in beautiful, historical Pashkov House. It was particularly lovely that Eugene and his wife, who have both become good friends, were at the ceremony and that I was seated with them. They were at the Translator Congress, too, where Eugene spoke just before I did (thank goodness!) during the plenary session.

The title of Alexandra Guzeva’s article about the award referred to a translation “Oscar,” which is apt because all of us thanked lots of people in our speeches. I read my list after I said the translation itself was “fun,” something someone expressed surprise about later! (What could be more fun than translating a combination of archaic language and contemporary slang, anyway?! This is how people like me get their kicks.) I didn’t throw away my scribbled list so want to type it in here: lots of people helped me with that translation and they deserve recognition. I never tire of making these lists because translating a book isn’t a one-person job even if the copyright consists of only one name.

I thanked:

-members of the jury;

-everyone at the Institute of Translation;

-Oneworld Publications, particularly Juliet Mabey, who hired me for the job despite my lack of experience, and copy editor Will Atkins, whose work went so far in improving the translation;

-Liza Prudovskaya and Olga Bukhina, both of whom went over a draft of my translation;

-Eugene’s literary agents Natasha Banke and Julia Goumen, who asked (in a Facebook mail exchange, if I remember correctly) if I wanted to translate excerpts of the novel back in early 2013; and

-Eugene (who is Zhenya to me) for writing the book in the first place and—of course, since author/translator love was an ongoing theme at the Congress—for the warmest, closest collegial relationships I could ever imagine, with both him and Tanya.

There are lots of others I should/could have thanked, from the prize’s sponsor, Alfa-Bank, and organizer, the Yeltsin Foundation, to other translators of Laurus that were so much fun (that word again!) to correspond with as I translated, to many, many of you who have done so much for me as I began and then continued translating.

Disclaimers: Last week was a wonderful whirl and I’m still getting caught up on my sleep so apologize for any oddities in this post!

Up Next: Yasnaya Polyana Award short list, Moscow trip report (including a record heavy homeward haul of books), Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Jacob’s Ladder, and Alexander Snegirev’s Vera (Faith).

Photo credit: Thank you to Anatoli Stepanenko, whose photos of literary events make me feel like I’m there. And who was so calming as I awaited the award announcement!

Read Russia Translation Prize Shortlists & Women in Translation Month

Shortlists for the 2016 Read Russia Translation Prize (the global prize, for all languages) were announced last week for four categories: nineteenth-century classics (three finalists), twentieth-century literature until 1990 (three finalists), contemporary literature (four finalists), and poetry (three finalists). Since Alexandra Guzeva’s article for Russia Beyond the Headlines covers things so well (and since it’s a beautiful beach day!), I’ll send you to her, right here, for all the details.

I do want to add, though, that I’m very excited that Laurus, my translation of Eugene Vodolazkin’s Лавр for Oneworld Publications, is on the very varied contemporary literature list. There are two other English-language translations that are finalists on, respectively, the nineteenth-century and poetry lists: Michael Pursglove’s translation of Ivan Turgenev’s Smoke and Virgin Soil for Alma Classics, and Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev’s translation of I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky, published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center. It makes me very happy to see this recognition for translations of Tarkovsky’s poetry. It also makes me very happy that this is Laurus’s second shortlist: I was pleasantly surprised to find the translation on the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize shortlist earlier this year, along with seven other books, including Stephen Pearl’s translation of Ivan Goncharov’s The Same Old Story, published by Alma Classics. The award was shared by Philip Roughton, who translated Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man for MacLehose Press, and Paul Vincent and John Irons, who translated 100 Dutch-Language Poems for Holland Park Press.

Since August is Women in Translation Month, I want to note a few bits of news about English-language translations of Russian fiction written by women:

• Melanie Moore’s translation of Tatyana Shcherbina’s Multiple Personalities, published by Glagoslav, was on Read Russia’s contemporary literature longlist. (That longlist, though, is so short it’s short!) Melanie also translated Margarita Khemlin’s The Investigator for Glagoslav; here’s my previous post about The Investigator and here’s a review of Melanie’s translation written by Lori Feathers for World Literature Today.
• The U.S. edition of Catlantis, written by Anna Starobinets, translated by Jane Bugaeva, illustrated by Andrzej Klimowski, and published here by New York Review Books, will be available in mid-September. I loved this fun kids’ book (previous post), which is already out in the U.K. from Pushkin Press. Catlantis is a wonderful gift for cat lovers of all ages; my previous post includes a rare Lizok’s Bookshelf cat photo.
• Yana Vagner’s To the Lake, published by Skyscraper Publications, will be out this fall, too, by an unnamed translator. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, known in Russian as Вонгозеро.
• Looking back at the post I wrote for the very first Women in Translation month, in 2014, at the invitation of Meytal Radzinski, who writes Biblibio, I found a few items to update. I mentioned, above, Melanie’s translation of Margarita Khemlin’s The Investigator, which is already available and want to mention that Margarita’s Klotsvog (previous post) will be on the way in a couple years, too: I’m translating it for the Russian Library series published by Columbia University Press. My translation of Marina Stepnova’s The Women of Lazarus came out last fall from World Editions and is on the list for the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award, along with the aforementioned Laurus plus my translation of Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina, also for Oneworld. And I’m finishing up Marina’s Italian Lessons (known in Russian as Безбожный переулок) for World Editions now (previous post). Some of the other writers I mentioned are already more available in translation now and/or have more books coming soon: Carol Apollonio’s translation of Alisa Ganieva’s The Mountain and the Wall (Праздничная гора) (mentioned here) is already out from Deep Vellum Publishing and Carol’s translation of Alisa’s Bride and Groom (previous post) is on the way. Also: Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Kukotsky Enigma is out this month from Northwestern University Press, in Diane Nemec Ignashev's translation.
• Finally, on (yet) another personal note, I think I’ve already mentioned somewhere along the way that I’m working on Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes for Oneworld Publications and loving it—one of my favorite aspects of translation is enjoying a book all over again when I translate. Of course there are many phases of “all over again” with all the editing, revising, proofing, correcting, and checking! Which is why I have to love a book (previous post on Zuleikha) to translate it…
• And now, truly finally, since I could go on and on and but have already written enough and, yes, the beach beckons: several of you have mentioned other books written by Russian women that you’re working on, that will be published in English translation within the next year or two, so I know there’s more to come. I’ll be watching for details on those so I can add them to future translation lists!

Up Next: Ludmila Ulitskaya’s family saga Jacob’s Ladder, Alexander Snegirev’s Faith/Vera, Anna Matveeva’s Vera Stenina’s Envy (Matveeva and Stenina are headed to the beach with me…), and Read Russia results, which will be announced on September 10 in Moscow.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: T is for Titans Like Tolstoy and Turgenev

T turns out to be a strange letter for me and Russian writers: there are some big-name classics I love but not much (meaning, really, nothing) yet in terms of contemporary favorites…

Ilya Repin's 1901 Tolstoy

There’s only one Russian novel I’ve read four times—War and Peace is my favorite book of any type or era, the book that got me into Russian literature in a big way—so Lev Tolstoy gets top billing on my T favorites list. War and Peace (you know, that long book about family and the War of 1812) is also one of the few books on the blog to have its own tag: the tag leads to posts I wrote around five years ago during my fourth W&P reading. I’m not much of a rereader, largely because there aren’t many books that feel worthy of years-later repeats when I have shelves and shelves of unread books, but, yes, I’ve been thinking about a fifth reading… As far as other Tolstoy books, I still have an affection for Father Sergius, the first novella I read in Russian, in an independent study with a favorite teacher, which made the whole experience all the more fun. And then there are The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which I’ve been meaning to reread forever, The Cossacks, which I’ve also been meaning to reread forever, Resurrection, Anna Karenina, Childhood, Prisoner of the Caucasus… The odd thing about my reading and rereading of Tolstoy is that despite (or maybe because of?) all that repeat reading, I still haven’t gotten to books like Boyhood and Youth, or numerous stories, including Tolstoy’s collection of Sevastopol stories. Another note on Tolstoy: Russian Dinosaur has a fun post here about translating Anna Karenina; it even includes a “family tree of Anna Karenina’s Anglophone translators.”

And then there’s Ivan Turgenev, another writer I seem predisposed to reread: the generation gap in Fathers and Sons only got better with age (my own, anyway) and I loved my second reading about the superfluous man who’s the title character in Rudin. Even so, Nest of the Gentry, which I’ve only read once, might be my very favorite Turgenev thus far, with its superfluous man and ideal woman. I’ll readily admit my memories of the book are very skewed by Andrei (Mikhalkov-)Konchalovsky’s adaptation of the novel: the crumbling house and lush outdoor scenes have stayed with me. There’s still plenty of Turgenev left for me to read for the first time, including Smoke and “King Lear of the Steppes,” plus I feel like I should give A Hunter’s Sketches another chance after reading (and not liking) the book years ago in grad school.

As for poets, I’ve always enjoyed Fedor Tyutchev (Tiutchev), and not just for “Умом Россию не понять,” the famous poem about how Russia isn’t a country to understand with your mind. It’s four wonderful lines you can read in a multitude of translations, here. I suspect part of my enjoyment of Tyutchev comes from the fact that a Russian musician friend gave me a book-and-cassette set years ago… I started listening to poems as I read, feeling the rhythms and words, and even memorizing lines. As I type, I realize how rich the letter T is for me in terms of sound, which is a hugely important part of my translation practice. Professor Gary Saul Morson read passages of War and Peace and Fathers and Sons to my class of history and literature students, and then I came to have the Tyutchev cassette. Then, just last year, I was also extraordinarily fortunate to hear Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski’s discussions and readings of “Field Hospital,” their translation of Arsenii Tarkovsky’s “Полевой госпиталь,” during last summer’s Pushkin House Russian Poetry Week in London and Translators’Coven in Oxford; the “Field Hospital” translation won Boris and Irina the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize. Which reminds me: if you’re planning to submit an entry for this year’s Compass Translation Award, you only have until July 31! This year’s poet for translation is, yes, Andrei Tarkovsky, a most worthy choice.

As for T writers for further reading... Well, after reading plenty of Iurii Tynyanov’s literary theory years ago, I want to read some of his fiction: I’ve had a wonderful old edition of Tynyanov’s “Lieutenant Kizhe” on the shelf forever and one of you has an enduring love for his Young Pushkin. And then there’s Aleksei K. Tolstoy and his Prince Serebryanny (a.k.a. The Silver Knight), an historical novel set during the rule of Ivan the Terrible that another friend has recommended more than once. As for contemporary writers, Tatyana Tolstaya’s The Slynx was disappointing for me but I may give her new story collection, Light Worlds, a try. There’s a fun English-language piece, here, from Art. Lebedev Studio, about designing the book.

Up Next: I’m very much enjoying Evgenii Chizhov’s Перевод с подстрочника (literally Translation from a Literal Translation) but it’s thick, meaning a couple books written in English about the FSU will probably come first.

Turgenev’s Rudin

Returning to Russian novels I first read over 20 years ago in college is a strange sensation: despite lots of déjà vu, sometimes I remember so little of the plots and characters that I might as well be reading the books for the first time.

Case in point: Ivan Turgenev’s “Рудин” (Rudin, 1855), a portrait-novel of a superfluous man of the 1840s. I read Rudin on my own and suspect I favored it over “Отцы и дети”(Fathers and Sons) because I heard no lectures or canonization, and could enjoy the book on my own terms. Looking back, I admit I was probably Bazarov-ish in my relative dislike of Fathers and Sons. (Previous post on Fathers and Sons, which I read again last summer.) (Note: Blogger is always quirky, and today it will not allow Cyrillic and italics together.)

If I had to choose between the two books now, I’d probably take Fathers and Sons over Rudin, though I think I like “Дворянское гнездо” (Nest of the Gentry) more still. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy Rudin, Turgenev’s first novel, on my second reading. I did. And I’m a little surprised that what I liked “back then” is still what I like best: I’ve always found (anti?)inspiration in portraits of superfluous men who talk nicely about ideas and ideals but never get around to doing much to affect change.

Rudin is a literary kick in the pants, and Dmitrii Rudin is a literary descendant of Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin and Lermontov’s Pechorin. (Previous post on Hero of Our Time) Rudin is more inert and benign than Pechorin, though: a duel situation is defused, a much-younger woman ends up telling him off, and he slinks out of town. He even knows he’ll never amount to much, which makes him all the more tragic. The slight technical similarities between the two books are also interesting: both writers use other characters to describe their title figures in detail. Rudin doesn’t narrate any portion of the novel like Pechorin does, but other figures tell stories about him that piece together a picture of his life.

Turgenev also uses one of my favorite simple plot structures. Rudin enters a fairly closed social situation where he affects others’ lives, acting as a catalyst on romantic and intellectual relationships. My favorite scene takes place on the ruins of an estate, when Natal’ia, a girl Rudin claims to love, shows admirable spine by, among other things, calling him малодушный (faint-hearted, literally small + soul) after he accepts her mother’s refusal to let them marry and cries, dramatically, “Боже мой!” (“My God!”).

Now that I think about it, maybe it was Natal’ia that I appreciated so much when I first read the book… To quote from D.S. Mirsky’s A History of Russian Literature:

The men, again, are very different from the women. The fair sex comes out distinctly more advantageously from the hands of Turgenev. The strong, pure, passionate, and virtuous woman, opposed to the weak, potentially generous, but ineffective and ultimately shallow man, was introduced into literature by Pushkin, and recurs again and again in the works of the realists, but nowhere more insistently than in Turgenev’s.

Turgenev on Amazon

Back to Classics: Turgenev and the Generation Gap

The Writer: Ivan Turgenev

Works and Dates: Отцы и дети (Fathers and Sons) (1861)

Why it’s important: Fathers and Sons depicts, with considerable irony, differences between middle-aged romantic idealists and progressive young materialists from the generation that came of age during the 1860s in Russia.

Criticism and commentary: Criticism of the book was so strong that Turgenev considered retiring from writing. With its irony and equal treatment of all sides, the book turned into an equal-opportunity offender. One critic who praised it was Dmitrii Pisarev. A brief summary.

IMHO: Fathers and Sons feels like the quintessential Russian novel thanks to family strife, politics, long-term houseguests, love, people hiding in bushes, class differences, and, of course, a duel. It is elegantly but simply written, and, weighing in at 200 pages and roughly 10 characters, felt like a homey ensemble piece after reading Vasilii Grossman’s epic Life and Fate.

The primary character is one Evgenii Bazarov, a nihilist who enjoys dissecting frogs. His views and philosophies at the beginning of the novel come close to “down with everything!” He has a tendency toward boorishness and invents quotes from Pushkin. What is important to Bazarov? That two times two equals four. This theme echoes throughout Russian literature, most notably in Dostoevsky’s 1864 Notes from the Underground.

We meet Bazarov, whose name is rooted in the Russian word for bazaar, as he arrives with his friend Arkadii Kirsanov for a visit at Arkadii’s family estate. Trouble, of course ensues, as Bazarov mixes it up verbally with Arkadii’s foppish Uncle Pavel, who enjoys sprinkling his speech with French words.

I won’t outline the book’s plot – which includes plenty of travel for Arkadii and Bazarov – because excellent summaries are available on Wikipedia (here) and in novelist Gary Shteyngart’s “You Must Read This” installment for NPR (here). Besides, the fun of the novel comes in its light humor, accompanied by, to steal a bit from Shteyngart, Turgenev’s compassion and lack of derision.

Many episodes in the book are a bit absurd, but none more than Bazarov’s duel with Arkadii’s Uncle Pavel. Pavel proposes the duel in exceedingly polite terms, and Bazarov decides to accept the challenge “in a gentlemanly way.” The two amicably decide to skip the formality of a reason. Lacking patience for each other is enough, and Pavel avoids mentioning the slightly scandalous scene he witnessed, from behind a lilac bush, that triggered the challenge. When Bazarov injures Pavel, Bazarov bandages him up, and Pavel tells his brother he challenged Bazarov because of a political conversation about Sir Robert Peel.

To me, the real irony of the duel is that Pavel looks almost like a nihilist, willing to give his life up for no formal reason other than dislike, and Bazarov looks almost like a traditionalist by agreeing to a duel to defend his honor. Bazarov has, however, already abandoned many of his principles and even fallen in love at least once, notably with a frosty woman named Odintsova, whose name begins with the Russian word один, “one.”

(Please don’t read the next one paragraph if you don’t want to know how the novel ends.)

To cap things off, when Bazarov succumbs to death -- the ultimate negation that cannot be denied – his parents have a priest perform last rites. I found the deathbed scenes very sad, probably because Bazarov came to feel so human with his contradictions and because his parents, who live far more modestly than the Kirsanovs, loved him so much and had great hopes for his medical career. The book ends at Bazarov’s grave, where his passionate, rebellious, sinful heart hides. The flowers growing on his grave speak of eternal tranquility and life. Even in death, Bazarov, his corpse helping the flowers grow, embodies a bazaar of ideas.

Fathers and Sons also includes a bazaar of relationships. There are literal fathers and sons – Bazarov and his healer father – and there are metaphorical father and sons – Bazarov and Arkadii, his follower. Odintsova watches over her younger sister, and Arkadii’s father has a complicated relationship with his servant Fenechka, who is, of course, not his social equal, but who eventually becomes his wife after bearing his son.

I enjoyed watching these connections develop because Turgenev treats his readers with compassion, too. He shows us conversations and gestures that characterize his people, and his brief descriptive passages are memorable because he fills them with distinctive objects that establish atmosphere and their owners’ personalities. Turgenev’s combination of social significance, characters who feel just usual and odd enough to be real, and spare literary techniques make Fathers and Sons an exceedingly pleasant book to read when you’d like to consider how people relate to each other and their ideas.

Summary: Fathers and Sons is a cleanly structured short novel that combines a snapshot of a historical time with gentle humor and irony. I certainly misunderstood the book in college when I called it a “period piece,” provoking my professor to, rightly, accuse me of not understanding the novel. Though duels and horse-drawn carriages seem to have gone out of fashion, the book’s larger questions about generations and mentors, philosophies and ideals, feel surprisingly fresh in the contentious election year 2008. Besides, students, nihilist or not, still dissect frogs.

Turgenev Books on Amazon