Turgenev Fathers and Sons

About Fathers and Sons

Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (1862) introduced the word 'nihilist' into world literature and remains the definitive novel of generational conflict. Bazarov, the razor-sharp nihilist and medical student who believes in nothing but science, collides with the older liberal gentry generation during a visit to his friend Arkady's family estate. Turgenev's portrait of Bazarov is one of the most searching in nineteenth-century literature — a man who is right about everything and wrong about what matters. The novel belongs to Turgenev's series of novels tracing the Russian intelligentsia through successive decades of the nineteenth century: Rudin (1856), Home of the Gentry (1859), On the Eve (1860), Fathers and Sons (1862), and Virgin Soil (1877).