Smoke

by Ivan Turgenev

Overview

Ivan Turgenev was a Russian writer and playwright in the 19th century.  Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons as well as his short stories were key contributions to Russian Realism.  This edition of Smoke includes a table of contents.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781531281588
Publisher:	Charles River Editors
Publication date:	03/22/2018
Sold by:	PUBLISHDRIVE KFT
Format:	eBook
Pages:	276
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818 - 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism and his novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. Turgenev's artistic purity made him a favorite of like-minded novelists of the next generation, such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad, both of whom greatly preferred Turgenev to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. James, who wrote no fewer than five critical essays on Turgenev's work, claimed that "his merit of form is of the first order" (1873) and praised his "exquisite delicacy", which "makes too many of his rivals appear to hold us, in comparison, by violent means and introduce us, in comparison, to vulgar things" (1896). Vladimir Nabokov, notorious for his casual dismissal of many great writers, praised Turgenev's "plastic musical flowing prose", but criticized his "labored epilogues" and "banal handling of plots". Nabokov stated that Turgenev "is not a great writer, though a pleasant one" and ranked him fourth among nineteenth-century Russian prose writers, behind Tolstoy, Gogol and Anton Chekhov, but ahead of Dostoyevsky. His idealistic ideas about love, specifically the devotion a wife should show her husband, were cynically referred to by characters in Chekhov's "An Anonymous Story".

Editorial Reviews

Enthusiasts of strong social and political commentary couched in novel format will appreciate this story…An excellent story of change permeating into all levels of society.”

Midwest Book Review

Turgenev ridicules with a most exquisite sensibility the politics of the royals and upper crust.”

AudioFile

"Turgenev to me is the greatest writer there ever was." —Ernest Hemingway

From the Publisher