'Psychologically acute, subtly and sometimes bitterly comic, these six stories all display the elegance and ironic clarity of Turgenev's finest writing.'
Ivan Turgenev (1818-83), perhaps best known for his novel Fathers and Sons, was a master at expanding the significance of a single episode into a story that illustrates a whole life, a whole relationship, even an entire age. These stories demonstrate the evolution of Turgenev's skills and preoccupations, from the diary form of his famous study of a 'superfluous man' (1850) and his exposure of the tyranny of serfdom in the small masterpiece Mumu (1854), to his two most poignant and nostalgic evocations of love, Asya (1858) and First Love (1860). In King Lear of the Steppes (1870), the longest of the stories, the dominant sentiment is ingratitude as Harlov deals with his two icy daughters and plots his doomed revenge; his failure is, if anything, more devastating than that of Shakespeare's Lear.
Richard Freeborn was until recently Professor of Russian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London.
'Turgenev's superbly ironic story, The Diary Of A Superfluous Man, in which a dying man reflects on the futility of his life, is among the six collected in this volume, in Oxford University Press's valuable series of classic texts.' Guardian
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
