Turgenev's final novel follows idealistic young revolutionaries attempting to incite peasant uprisings in 1870s Russia, exploring the growing divide between educated radicals and the people they aim to liberate. This 19th-century fiction captures the tensions of a society on the brink of change through R. S. Townsend's translation.
At one o’clock in the afternoon of a spring day in the year 1868, a young man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was toiling up the back staircase of a five-storied house on Officers Street in St. Petersburg. Noisily shuffling his down-trodden goloshes and slowly swinging his heavy, clumsy figure, the man at last reached the very top flight and stopped before a half-open door hanging off its hinges. He did not ring the bell, but gave a loud sigh and walked straight into a small, dark passage. “Is Nejdanov at home?” he called out in a deep, loud voice. “No, he’s not. I’m here. Come in,” an equally coarse woman’s voice responded from the adjoining room.Continue reading →
This is the R. S. Townsend translation, a public-domain English text. Marginalia presents it unabridged, with chapter navigation, your reading position saved, and optional AI commentary on any passage.
A towering figure of 19th-century Russian literature, this nobleman-turned-writer (1818-1883) masterfully captured the social tensions of his era through psychological realism. His novels, particularly Fathers and Sons, introduced the world to the concept of nihilism while exploring generational conflict with unprecedented nuance and empathy. All works by Ivan Turgenev →
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