Rudin: A Novel
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who want a shorter work as an introduction to Turgenev's novels
- Literary scholars interested in the "superfluous man" figure and intellectual themes
- Teachers and students who need a public-domain English text for book clubs or classroom discussion
- Readers of classic fiction who enjoy narratives driven by dialogue and characters' debates
Not a good fit for
- Readers who prefer tense plots and strong dramatic conflict and lack patience
- Beginners with weak English who find it hard to handle the long sentences of a nineteenth-century translation
- Readers seeking detailed scholarly annotations or a parallel Russian text
Reading tips
- Focus on Rudin's several long speeches, and as you read, note what he promises and what he later actually does.
- Compare Rudin with the other male characters and observe how the author uses the ensemble to set off the protagonist.
- After finishing, read it alongside On the Eve and compare the two works' different judgments on intellectuals' capacity for action.
- When reading in English, read a whole chapter first and then look up unfamiliar words, so as not to interrupt the narrative rhythm too often.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
FAQ
Which is more suitable to read first, Rudin or On the Eve?
What is the "superfluous man," and do I need to understand it before reading?
Does this edition include annotations or an introduction?
Comments
Find this book
This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818–1883), was a nineteenth-century Russian novelist. Because the available records are limited, his early life and education cannot be described in detail here. What can be confirmed is his achievement as the author of several widely influential works; this collection holds thirty-five of his books, including Fathers and Sons (also known as Fathers and Children), the second volume of A Sportsman's Sketches, and the novels On the Eve, Rudin, and Asya. His writing is noted for delicate psychological portrayal and a restrained, concise style, and for showing social change through the interplay of personal feeling and social reality, with characters often caught between ideal and actuality. These works hold an important place in Russian literature and the European novel tradition, and retain lasting value for readers seeking to understand nineteenth-century Russian society and the spiritual character of its educated classes.
