Russian · b. 1812
Ivan Goncharov was a Russian novelist best known for Oblomov, whose famously indolent hero gave the Russian language the term 'Oblomovism' for paralyzing inertia.
Ivan Goncharov was a major figure of nineteenth-century Russian realism, though he wrote relatively few novels over his career.
His masterpiece, Oblomov (1859), portrays a gentle, intelligent nobleman so paralyzed by inertia and apathy that he can barely rouse himself from his bed — a characterization so vivid that “Oblomovism” entered the language as a term for fatal indolence. The novel is both a comic and a profound study of will, society, and the Russian character. He also wrote The Same Old Story and The Precipice.
Goncharov is remembered above all for Oblomov, one of the enduring achievements of Russian literature.
by Ivan Goncharov
Ilya Ilyich Oblomov has not left his sofa in years. The famous first chapter follows him through the course of a single morning — visitors come, he considers getting up, does not get up. The novel follows his late attempt, under the influence of a love affair, to change, and his return to inertia.
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