This book contains three short works that provide a wonderful example of the Russian approach to romantic literature. The form is wonderful, the characters perfectly created and the plot shores up the authors ideas with an most resonant clarity.

First love shows the blend of comedy and tragedy that is so prevalent in Russian works of the period. The events portrayed are those that could occur in daily life even to today. The emotions that are evoked are real and timeless. It surely adds proof to the argument that Russian works of this period age so much better than do those authors from other countries whose works have survived.

Spring Torrents is the longest of the works and still provides a feel that the length is exactly perfect for the tale. If the prologue does not pull you into the story you have an absences of a great concern that plagues many of us. How many of us fear reaching that point (or have reached that point)in life where we recognize all of the great loss of opportunity which has occurred in our life. From this prologue the story races along explaining how one of us has reached the position when the concern has become a reality. Wonderful feelings are evoked on the path.

This book is highly recommended for all and is a must read for the Tolstoy, Chekov, Gogol and Dostoevsky fans.

First love is a wonderful evocation of youth, love and life in 19th century Russian life. I challenge anyone not to be moved by this book, which is both humorous and touchingly melencholic.

If reading in translation has proved difficult for you in the past, Freeborn's translation of Turgenev's short stories will suprise you in a wonderful way. There were times when I forgot that I was in the process of reading, but rather felt that these very scenes were being lived out before me, a bodiless and voiceless viewer.

Turgenev's understanding of and ability to capture the complete emotional processes of people in love in this collection touched me in its sincerity and genuine clarity. All the insane, skipping-over-themselves thoughts and quick jealousies that people experience are completely captured in stories like "First Love" and "Diary of a Superfluous Man."

Turgenev is a great introduction to Russian fiction. I'm sorry that I didn't discover him earlier.

Anyone who has read literature knows the best and most noteworthy volumes. This is not necessarily because the work is 'well written' or conveys ideas easily to the reader, or because someone else says it's good. Good literature is the work that has a completely positive effect upon the reader. I have been reading serious literature for several years now, and A Sportsman's Notebook is quite possibly the most wonderful literary work I have yet encountered. If I'm feeling down, I crack it open, and by the time I'm done reading I feel better. If I'm feeling good, it makes me feel that much better. Turgenev's words ring true in this volume -- to me it's as sweet as candy.

This fine gem of a book typifies the sort of volume that one must be able to extract from the water-logged valise when the steamer has gone down and one finds oneself stranded on the proverbial desert island. After 30 years of rather serious reading, I still tend to think that Turgenev is one of the finest authors ever to put ink to paper. A Sportsman's Notebook is a wonderful place to start an exploration of Russian literature. Now, if I can just find my tramp steamer tickets.

This book has some of the best short fiction ever written. Hemingway said, "Tolstoy wrote the best books, BUT TURGENEV WAS THE GREATEST WRITER." And then he went on to praise the short story "A Rattle of Wheels" above all other Turgenev stories. So if Hemingway thought Turgenev the greatest writer, and "Rattle of Wheels" the greatest story he wrote, then he certainly thought "Rattle of Wheels" the greatest short story ever written (aside from his own works, of course, egomaniac that he was). And "Rattle of Wheels" is in this collection. I personally prefer "The Singers". Read this collection. You won't regret it.

All congenitally melancholy souls will love this novel, where intense romantic and spiritual conflicts unfold in the dreamlike setting of a nineteenth century Russian estate. This is a beautifully written, extremely lyrical work...it will especially appeal to devotees of Romantic piano music. The final few paragraphs are unforgettable and heartbreaking. I consider Home of the Gentry to be the most quintessentially "Turgenevian" of all the author's works. I have read the novel many times, and I never tire of it. If you are new to nineteenth century Russian literature, this is a good work with which to start. The novel is not long, and most chapters are quite short. Each one stands like a perfect little jewel, and many passages will remain in your memory for a long time. Like most Russian novels of the period, Home of the Gentry is a novel of ideas. Your reading will be enhanced if you have some background in the cultural dynamics of the period and understand the intellectual caste to which the protagonist belongs - he is a "superfluous man," and his conflicted ideological stance relates directly to issues that were intensely debated in the 1840s. Although knowing something about this situation is helpful, I imagine that even those readers who have no prior knowledge of the period will enjoy the work immensely. If nothing else, Turgenev's elegiac portrayal of the Russian countryside is unrivaled....even Tolstoy cannot match Turgenev's affecting depictions of the land itself. Freeborn's translation reads smoothly, and there is a helpful introductory essay in this edition.

Unlike his famous contemporaries Turgenev's writing is not heroic and it's not full of pathos.Home Of The Gentry is a sensitive 'quiet' novel, the characters are portreyed delicately with an impossible combination of cynicism and true love for humen nature. The touching love story is a reward for those who like smart observations and have a real passion for the truely romantic.

I just came from seeing this adaptation performed in a spectacular production at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. The great Irish playwright Brian Friel has infused the text with wonderful, ironic humor. The language plays elegantly, but with a nice contemporary bite. If you love Chekhov, you'll love this version.

During 1 month in 1840s Russia, Natalya, a well-to-do 29-year-old married woman, has an infatuation for Belyayev, her son's tutor. However, he only sees Natalya as an "older woman" and his employer. Vera, Natalya's 17-year-old ward, also is interested in Belyayev, but he doesn't want to get involved with her either. Rakitin, Natalya's male friend and confidante, wants more than just friendship from her and is jealous of Belyayev. Bolshintov, a 40-year-old neighbor, makes an offer of marriage to Vera, an idea that she finds ridiculous. Obviously, with this set-up, many needs and desires are unmet and frustrations abound. This is a great play about human relationships, with the action being more psychological than physical. As a masterpiece with a timeless theme, I highly recommend it.

Everybody should read some Turgenev. He was the man whom made the world outside Russia aware of that the great Russian literature existed. And he has inspired great western authors too, like Guy de Maupassant (whom in his turn inspired Chekhov), Henry James, Ernest Hemingway (whom again also admired Chekhov and Maupassant). By reading Turgenev today, one will find that his writing still is astonishingly modern and will continue to have influence on new generations of writers. Turgenev was one of the greatest and all of his tales are imbued with his unique feeling for the texture and dignity of all human in life.

When I was introduced to this great book, I had only read Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons." I checked out a copy from the California State University, Long Beach library and began reading it immediately. I was enthralled throughout my reading by Turgenev's powerful descriptions of not only the serfs and their masters but also the nature surrounding them. It is an excellent book, and I always think of the places depicted in the book and the people.

This is the translation that I first read (years after it was published) and loved. The novel has been around a long time but its attraction can be won or lost according to the translation. Another, later translation irked me so much that I didn't want to finish reading it. Now that I've found my favorite translation -- which I think is more poetic and does better justice to the style and mood of the Russian original -- I'm buying a copy for myself and one for a gift to someone in high school.

This book is known mostly, perhaps, for the character of Bazarov, widely considered the vanguard of nihilism in literature, especially in Russia. Bazarov is a significant fact of fiction, a sketch of the young middle class intellegentsia developing in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Brash, self-confident, iconoclastic, educated young men like Bazarov were popping up all over Russia. Turgenev finds a way to tie this into a rich tapestry of love, familial relationships, and simplicity that Arkady and Bazarov, the young men, succumb to. Even in his determination to change the world by destroying it so it can be rebuilt, Bazarov does not overcome the strong bonds of family. Love and family has the sort of redemptive power found so often in War and Peace, and indeed, Turgenev writes from a similar perspective and on a similar wavelength as Tolstoy. This book, while not big on plot, is to be appreciated for blending its simple prose with a poetic passion in showing how love between fathers and sons is ageless, and love between men and women occurs. I found the last passage very moving.

In Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, as in most of Chekhov, nothing much really happens. People talk a lot and that's about it. Should be dull, right? But it isn't. The talk, and the characters revealed, reflect the profound changes that were being felt in Russian society at the end of the 19th Century; changes that would set the stage for much of what was to happen in the 20th Century. But more important to a modern reader, the ideas and the real life implication of those ideas are as current and relevant as when Turgenev wrote. Bazarov, the young 'nihilist', sounds just like the typical student rebel of the 60's (or of the Seattle WTO protests just recently). He has the arrogance and the innocence of idealistic youth. He is as believeable, and as moving in his ultimate hurt, as any young person today might be confronted with the limitations of idealism and the fickle tyranny of personal passion.

I loved this book when I first read it as a teenager and I enjoyed it even more on subsequent rereadings. It makes the world of 19th century Russia seem strangely familiar and it gives many a current political thread a grounding in meaningful history.

One of the most eloquent works in Russian literature, Fathers and Sons has had a major influence on subsequent Russian writers. Turgenev weaves so much into this short novel. As the title suggests he is dealing principally with generational differences, but ultimately this is a book about finding yourself in the world. In Bazarov, we have the ultimate nihilist, someone who renounces all societal conventions, which his peers utterly fail to understand. As a young doctor he has turned his back on noble society. We see some of his old feelings briefly rise to the surface in a romance which he pursues, but Bazarov chooses to extinguish those feelings, and return to his paternal home, where he ultimately seals his fate.

Turgenev is the bridge between the Russian writers of the early 19th century and the later 19th century. In many ways, Fathers and Sons reminded me of the theme which Lermontov explored in "A Hero of Our Time," and Turgenev appears in Dostoevsky's work, even if deliberately as a caricature.

Turgenev creates prose so spare, yet so elegant you find yourself rereading entire paragraphs just to try to net some hidden agenda behind the simplicity. Turgenev's influence on Hemingway was probably never more brilliantly expressed than in these understated words from A Moveable Feast: "I had read all of Turgenev...(of Dostoevsky) frailty and madnesss...were there to know as you knew the landscapes and roads in Turgenev..."

This book is more than a simple love story between a young man and an older woman, though the idea of the shortness and depthlessness of young love is an important theme. There are also such themes as the dissolution and fall into poverty of the Russian nobility as seen in Zinaida and her mother, a former princess; the idea of 19th century Russia shrugging off the chains of serfdom and royal dominance is also explored in the vastly superior Fathers and Sons. Another noteworthy theme is alienation from parents and society in general; Vladimir Petrovich is dominated utterly by his menacing father and carking, gossipy mother. He grows to become a bachelor, rehashing his tragic story before a fireplace in an inn. Towards the end of the book, when Vladimir's father, who shares with Vladimir a strong affection for Zinaida, flogs the young girls arm with a riding crop, as well as the threat the father gives to one of Zinaida's numerous suitors, we are made to wonder exactly what part romantic relationships have in the alleviation or exacerbation of violent mental illness, or at least a violent and cold mindset.

This book, however deep and lovingly crafted, is a cipher next to Fathers and Sons. It's also a lot shorter; first time Turgenev readers might want to start here.

An old man reflects on his most dearest love in his life: his first love at 16 for a girl of 21.
His love is not requited for a truly astounding reason.

This short novel is a masterful evocation of an adolescent love, pure and without interest, but dramatic and cruel (whipping).

An unforgettable masterpiece.

Turgenev's brief novel, "First Love" is about growing older and lossing innocence. Vladimir, the central character who tells the story, makes a large memory excersice to remember, to write and to communicate his unusual first love experience when he was sixteen. He does that in beautiful prose, realistic and lyric simultaneusly.

Love in this novel for Vladimir is mainly an emotional experience, not physichal. There is no sex and, more important, not explicit sexual desire. This could be considered old fashioned or artificial by contemporary readers but somehow Turgenev manages to make it credible and moving.

The translation by Isaiah Berlin is excellent, at least much better that the one I've read into Spanish.

_Rudin_ is a good novel by Ivan Turgenev, but altogether non-essential, unless you want to read all of his works.

The character Rudin is a fortunate young man in 1860s Russia, a man around thirty years of age, in the prime of his life. He is very much a superfluous man, like the man Turgenev wrote of in his shorter story "A Superfluous Man." He is all talk and no action. He has high-minded ideals but can not transfer them into deeds.

I suppose Turgenev saw many young Russian men of his generation who served as the basis for Rudin, the character. Natalya, Rudin's love interest, at least has the fortitude to translate her ideals into actions, but she is offered fewer possibilities by Russian society. She comes off more sympathetically than the title character, but she is female, and therefore a minor character in a Turgenev work. I found her more interesting, and similar to the female main character in _Oblomov_ by Goncharov.

The political edge on this novel is not nearly so sharp as that on _Fathers and Sons_. Mostly this seems a personal and emotional novel, rather than a political novel. A student wanting a general grounding in the major novels of Russian Literature can probably skip _Rudin_. On the other hand, if you read _Fathers and Sons_ and found that book very rewarding, you may want to take a peek at _Rudin_, to see what another (earlier) novel by Turgenev is like.

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Rudin is the lead character in this short novel, which reads like a play set in mid nineteenth century Russia. He enters into a provincial society peopled by the usual array of grand dames, eccentrics, local radicals, and beautiful / eligible debutant-daughter, with whom he (believes he) falls in love.

Whilst the characters and setting is characteristic of many European novels of the time, the story takes an unexpected turn. Rudin is a fateful character, and one whose shallowness and egotism is exposed by the young daughter who he seduces. Turgenev manages to present Rudin as a sympathetic character albeit imbued with the resignation that he is a 'superfluous man' (cf. 'A Hero of Our Times' by Lermontov)

The book is well written and deserves a place in the canon of nineteenth century Russian novels . Particularly recommended for anyone who has read Fathers and Sons.

This is a simple parable, told within a beautiful story. We meet Rudin through several people's eyes and learn much more about him from the differences others see in him than we learn directly. It is facsinating to see the interplay between the man's fantasies and his facade. You are left with very profound and troubling unanswered questions about your own life and our tenuous connections to "reality." This is a powerful volume for anyone who is seriously and sincerely examining their own motives, especially if you are dissatisfied with your current conclusions.