Ivan Turgenev

“You can read it in a long afternoon. It’s sublime in its literary style, even in translation. There’s a clarity and vivacity of characterization which makes the characters very memorable. It’s also a very contemporary book. The culture wars we’re having today were described by Turgenev in Fathers and Sons…The other thing about Turgenev and this book is that it was the first novel to put Russian literature on the map. There had been translations of Gogol and Pushkin and, for me, Turgenev’s masterpiece is Sketches from a Hunter’s Album, which came out 10 years before and was badly translated into French. But Fathers and Sons really hit the big time. In Germany Turgenev suddenly became the most-read author. It established what a Russian novel was and held that position for 20 years until suddenly, in the mid-1880s, people discovered Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and the big sprawling novel became what Russian novels were meant to be like.” Read more...

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Orlando Figes, Historian

“Turgenev is describing a feudal system which is very similar to the one I describe in my book. It’s very hierarchical. Also, I think it’s a sympathetic portrayal of the peasants, a class of people who had never before been described with that degree of intimacy. Apparently the Tsar at the time, Alexander the Third said that one of the factors that motivated him to abolish serfdom was reading this book. It made a huge splash at the time. And that’s because it was much more difficult not to grant these people more rights when you’d put a human face on them.” Read more...

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Daniyal Mueenuddin, Short Story Writer