Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev and Constance Garnett

With an introduction by Rosamund Bartlett and an afterword by Tatiana Tolstaya Turgenev's depiction of the conflict between generations and their ideals stunned readers when Fathers and Sons was first published in 1862. But many could also sympathize with Arkady's fascination with its nihilist hero whose story vividly captures the hopes and regrets of a changing Russia. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

“Our higher officials are fond as a rule of nonplussing their subordinates; the methods to which they have recourse to attain that end are rather various.”

“... a thin little woman with a pinched-up face, drawn together like a fist... “

“Who's crying there?' he added, after a short pause—'Mother? Poor thing! Whom will she feed now with her exquisite beetroot-soup?”

“The estate had only recently been put on to the new reformed system, and the new mechanism worked, creaking like an ungreased wheel, warping and cracking like homemade furniture of unseasoned wood.”

“There's no help for it, Vasya! A son is a separate piece cut off. He's like the falcon that flies home and flies away at his pleasure; while you and I are like funguses in the hollow of a tree, we sit side by side, and don't move from our place. Only I am left you unchanged for ever, as you for me.'“

“The whole person of Arkady's uncle, with its aristocratic elegance, had preserved the gracefulness of youth and that air of striving upwards, away from earth, which for the most part is lost after the twenties are past.”

“People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch-tree.”

“A man's capable of understanding anything—how the æther vibrates, and what's going on in the sun—but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he's incapable of understanding.”

Masterpiece, masterpiece, masterpiece.

I dove into Fathers & Sons after dabbling in some of Turgenev's other short stories. Wow.
It is interesting to read this book after Dostoevsky's “Demons”. Fathers & Sons is a more compelling, lucid and moving version of the former. With this, Turgenev has firmly won me over to his side in the Dostoevsky vs Turgenev brawl.
His depiction of the female cast is stunning in its understated soulfulness and accuracy, similar to Tolstoy's.

The danger of nihilism, the legitimate grievances that underlie the mindset of those who succumb to nihilism, and the unbearable inertia that underlies both the lifestyle that conforms to tradition versus the lifestyle that breaks away from its entirety - Fathers & Sons is a pitiful, inspiring train-wreck of the Russian psyche that you cannot tear yourself away from.

Refreshing and short, this is the most accessible Russian novel I have read. It covers changing worldviews, father son dynamics and changing relationships, and most of all the vast differences between two generations. The 1860's in Russia is a fantastic setting to explore the latter theme too, so much is being debated and challenged.