Fathers and Children

A 19th-century Russian masterpiece about love, politics, family, and the tension between the new generation and the old world. Ivan TurgenevsFathers and Childrenis a book full tobursting with life, both comic and tragic. At the heart ofthis novel about love, politics, and society, strong beliefsand heated disagreements, illness and death, is the generationaldivide between the young and the old. Whenthe young university graduate Arkady and his mentor, thenihilist Bazarov, leave St. Petersburg to visit their agingparents in the provinces, the conflict that ensues fromthe generations clashing views of the worldthe youthsradicalism and the parents liberalismis both representativeof nineteenth-century Russia and recognizably contemporary. At the time of its publication in 1862, thebook aroused indignation in critics who felt betrayed...