Fathers and Sons
Bazarov—a gifted, impatient, and caustic young man—has journeyed from school to the home of his friend Arkady Kirsanov. But soon Bazarov’s outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements that will utterly transform the Kirsanov household and reflect the changes taking place across all of nineteenth-century Russia.Fathers and Sons enraged the old and the young, reactionaries, romantics, and radicals alike when it was first published. At the same time, Turgenev won the acclaim of Flaubert, Maupassant, and Henry James for his craftsmanship as a writer and his psychological insight. Fathers and Sons is now considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.A timeless depiction of generational conflict during social upheaval, it vividly portrays the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution to come—and offers modern-day readers much to reflect upon as they look around at their own tumultuous, ever changing world.Introduction by Jane Costlow
Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
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2013–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- I like to recommend Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" as it gives a contemporary critical view of the nihilistic and utopian ideologies that shaped Russian intellectual discourse of the 1860s.
- It depends on what you like. Flannery O'Connor's fiction is extraordinary. I bet you'd like Nabokov based on what you've said so far; I like his earlier Russian novels best (which have excellent English translations), like The Defense, for example. If you want to go whole hog into postmodernism then try Pynchon or Gaddis.
The 19th century Russians from Gogol to Chekhov are pretty much can't-lose. Turgenev's Fathers and Sons is beautiful and captures the spirit of youth.
Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier is a short masterpiece. The Great Gatsby is as good as its reputation says. Read Dickens if you want the essence of the English language and character. Read Kafka for the strangest articulation of modernity. Bruno Schulz is more whimsical. Borges is another whom your list suggests you should try.
If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, find Martin Seymour-Smith's Guide to Modern World Literature and browse through it to blow your mind. It covers everything and seems impossible, except it exists so it can't be.
- 1866 was shortly after the publication of Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, which popularized the word nihilism.
- Funny to read this today. Last night I got sick of TV, sick of all the interwebs' distractions, and just sat there with eyes closed, letting my mind wander.
Finally I remembered I wanted to read Fathers and Sons (Turgenev). Here's a great question: why am I here and not reading that? BRB.
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