Russian · b. 1818
Ivan Turgenev was a Russian novelist and one of the great realists of the nineteenth century, author of Fathers and Sons, a masterpiece of generational conflict and the novel of ideas.
Ivan Turgenev was the first Russian writer to win wide acclaim in Europe, admired for the elegance, restraint, and humane sympathy of his prose, and a friend of leading Western writers of his day.
His masterpiece, Fathers and Sons (1862), dramatizes the clash between generations and ideologies in changing Russia through the figure of the nihilist Bazarov, and remains a landmark of the novel of ideas. His other works include A Sportsman’s Sketches, Rudin, and On the Eve, and he was also a notable playwright.
Turgenev is celebrated as one of the great nineteenth-century novelists, a master of psychological nuance and the poetry of mood and place.
by Ivan Turgenev
Arkady brings his friend Bazarov home to his father's estate. Bazarov is a nihilist — he believes in nothing except empirical science and rejects all authority, sentiment, and tradition. His conflict with the older generation, his unexpected passion for Madame Odintsova, and his death define the Russian novel's engagement with the question of what to believe.
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