This volume combines two novels, an early and a late one, by Ivan Turgenev, the master chronicler of 19th-century Russia.

“A Month in the Country” (1859) was his most popular work during his lifetime, and for good reason. It is an epic story of love and loss, which is both universal and uniquely Russian. The protagonist Fyodor Lavretsky, the son of a wealthy landowner, educated in the Western style, falls in love with a woman he meets at the Moscow theater, and both settle in Paris. When the marriage fails, he returns to Russia, as a cosmopolitan or “superfluous man.” Returning to his country estate, he is able to start anew, reconcile with his responsibilities to the land and its people, and achieve an almost spiritual fulfillment in his love for his cousin Lisa;

In “A Nest of Gentlefolk” (1877), the greatest of Turgenev’s works, he dares to confront the era's new radical politics. The Tsarist regime is increasingly challenged. Young people arrive in the countryside to live alongside the peasants, both to learn from them and to radicalize them. The poet Alexey Nnezdanov is an unlikely revolutionary figure, an overly analytical character awaiting tragedy. While working as a teacher on a country estate, he is drawn to Maria’s confidence and political commitment — an idealist who is determined to sacrifice herself for the revolutionary cause. Turgenev, himself a liberal, sympathetic toward his characters, respects the seriousness of this new generation’s methods, which he could not fully endorse. “A Nest of Gentlefolk” made Turgenev an international personality and an analyst of Russia’s complex political scene (in the year of its publication, hundreds of young Russians uprising were put on trial, many sentenced to heavy penalties); in Russia, it was unanimously condemned from all sides. Was Turgenev an exceptional artist? In both these novels, his deep humanity, love for nature and the Russian countryside shine through in the lyric elegance of his prose.