Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Turgenev was the most liberal-spirited and unqualifiedly humane of all the great nineteenth-century Russian novelists, and in "Virgin Soil," his biggest and most ambitious work, he sought to balance his deep affection for his country and his people with his growing apprehensions about what their future held in store. At the heart of the book is the story of a young man and a young woman, torn between love and politics, who struggle to make headway...

"A timeless tale of youth, love, and loss, masterfully rendered by Ivan Turgenev Vladimir Petrovich and his friends are gathered at a party recounting stories of their first loves. Vladimir tells a vivid tale of unrequited adolescent passion: When he was sixteen, he met the beautiful twenty-one-year-old Zinaida Alexandrovna Zasyekina and fell head over heels. Unfortunately for Vladimir, several other--more eligible--suitors also hoped to win the affections...

From the New York Times bestselling Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves - and our world today. For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us,...