First Love is an example of a frame story. The story starts with the protagonist, Vladimir Petrovich, at a party. The three guests, all men "not old but no longer young," are taking turns recounting the stories of their first loves. When Vladimir's turn comes to tell his story, he suggests he write down the story in a notebook because it is a rather long, unusual tale and he is not adept at extemporaneous narration. The other men agree and a few weeks later the story within the story continues with Vladimir reading from his notebook as he recounts the memory of his first love.

The novel begins with the introduction of three of the characters - Aleksandra, Lezhnev, and Pandalevskii. Pandalevskii relates to Aleksandra Dar'ya Mikhailovna's invitation to come and meet a Baron Muffel'. Instead of the Baron, Rudin arrives and captivates everyone immediately with his intelligent and witty speeches during the argument with Pigasov. Interestingly, Rudin's arrival is delayed until Chapter Three. After his success at Dar'ya Mikhailovna's, he stays the night and the next morning meets Lezhnev who arrives to discuss some business affairs with Dar'ya Mikhailovna. This is the...

The story revolves around Elena, a girl with a hypochondriac mother and an idle father, a retired guards lieutenant with a mistress. On the eve of the Crimean War, Elena is pursued by a free-spirited sculptor (Shubin) and a serious-minded student (Berzyenev). But when Berzyenev's revolutionary Bulgarian friend, Insarov, meets Elena, they fall in love. In secretly marrying Insarov Elena disappoints her mother and enrages her father, who had hoped to marry her to a dull, self-satisfied functionary, Kurnatovski.

The story of Gerasim, a deaf and mute serf whose life of poverty is brought into sharp relief by his connection with Mumu, a dog he rescued, brought greater national attention to the cruelties of serfdom, and received praise for its brutal portrayal of this institution in Russian society. Originally published in 1854, Mumu was written by Turgenev while he was in custody for writing an obituary for fellow writer Nikolai Gogol. From a good family, Turgenev was well-read, and had spent extensive time in the West (he was fluent in German, French, and English). His primary concern, and the main...

Roudine est un roman d'Ivan Tourgueniev ecrit en 1855 dans son domaine de Spasskoie-Loutovinovo et paru dans la revue Le Contemporain en 1856. A la campagne, des hobereaux se reunissent chez une dame moscovite. Il y a la un frere et une soeur, plus quelques energumenes un peu fantaisistes. Arrive le heros, Roudine, qui subjugue tout le monde, sauf un homme qui l'a tres bien connu pendant leur jeunesse. Le heros tombe amoureux de la fille de son hote au grand desespoir du frere de celle-ci. La jeune fille, qui est beaucoup moins sotte que l'on ne pense, est prete a le suivre par amour, mais il...

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.

Includes: The Diary of a Superfluous Man, A Tour in the Forest, Yakov Pasinkov, Andrei Kolosov, and A Correspendence. The Diary of a Superfluous Man is an 1850 novella by Russian author Ivan Turgenev. It is written in the first person in the form of a diary by a man who has a few days left to live as he recounts incidents of his life. The story has become the archetype for the Russian literary concept of the superfluous man.