First Love and Other Stories. Ivan Turgenev

In this volume of “First Love and Other Stories” six of Turgenev’s shorter works are collected together. Firstly in “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” we find the story of a dying man who recounts the incidents of his life. Secondly this collection contains the short story “Mumu”, which relates what follows when Gerasim, a deaf and mute man, rescues a drowning dog. Thirdly, in “Acia”, there is the story of an unnamed narrator who recounts, in a remorseful recollection, his love for the illegitimate daughter of a Russian landowner. Fourthly there is the title story of the volume “First Love” the unfortunate tale of a young man’s love for who he ultimately discovers is his father’s mistress. Next in this collection is “A Lear of the Steppes”, a reworking of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” set in the Russian countryside. Lastly there is “The Song of Triumphant Love”, a story of the friendship between two young men, Fabio and Muzzio, and the woman that they both love. In the numerous critical essays that American author Henry James wrote of Ivan Turgenev’s work he claimed “his merit of form is of the first order”. While somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, and Anton Chekhov, Turgenev rightly deserves a place amongst the great Russian writers of the 19th century. This edition includes a biographical afterword.