Turgenev, Ivan : Fathers and Sons

Translated From The Russian By George Reavey.
Foreword By Alan Hodge.

The publication of Fathers and Sons enraged old and young, reactionaries, romantics, and radicals. Unlike its predecessors, it attacked all social classes through its portrait of the blatant nihilist, Bazarov, who makes a practice of exposing self - deception in those around him. On a visit to the Kirsanov estate, Bazarov's scathing comments, his dark example, threaten the integrity of each of his hosts: the old landowner, Nicholas, who prides himself on his mistress, a former peasant, the old man's decadent brother, Paul, who prides himself on his fashionable lack of purpose; and Arcady, Nicholas' intellectual on, who prides himself on his understanding of Bazaróv's motivation. Widely criticized by Russia's radical press, Turgenev won the acclaim of Flaubert, Maupassant and Henry James for being the first author to use psychological character studies instead of elaborate plot, and the first to create the modern revolutionary type, the 'outsider.'