Fathers and Children - the Original Classic Edition

This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside Fathers and Children:

When Turgenev shaped the character, he certainly drew on his own memories of his stay at Berlin, at a time when Bruno Bauer was laying it down as a dogma that no educated man ought to have opinions on any subject, and when Max Stirner was convincing the young Hegelians that ideas were mere smoke and dust, seeing that the only reality in existence was the individual Ego.

...And in this the resemblance is true, much more general, indeed, than the model selected would lead one to imagine; so general, in fact, that, apart from the question of art, Turgenev-he has admitted it himself-felt as if he were drawing his own portrait; and therefore it is, no doubt, that he has made his hero so sympathetic.-From A History of Russian Literature (1900).

...There is not a touch of banality from beginning to end, and not an unnecessary word; the portraits of the old father and mother, the young Kirsanov, and all the minor characters are perfect; and amidst the trivial crowd Bazarov stands out like Lucifer, the strongest-the only strong character-that Turgenev created, the first Nihilist-for if Turgenev was not the first to invent the word, he was the first to apply it in this sense.

...I came here with the carriage, but there are three horses for your coach too, said Nikolai Petrovitch fussily, while Arkady drank some water from an iron dipper brought him by the woman in charge of the station, and Bazarov began smoking a pipe and went up to the driver, who was taking out the horses; there are only two seats in the carriage, and I dont know how your friend

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...When Bazarov, after repeated promises to come back certainly not later than in a months time, tore himself at last from the embraces detaining him, and took his seat in the coach; when the horses had started, the bell was ringing, and the wheels were turning round, and when it was no longer any good to look after them, and the dust had settled, and Timofeitch, all bent and tottering as he walked, had crept back to his little room; when the old people were left alone in their little house, which seemed suddenly to have grown shrunken and decrepit too, Vassily Ivanovitch, after a few more moments of hearty waving of his handkerchief on the steps, sank into a chair, and his head dropped on to his breast.