Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons is a moving portrait of relations between generations in a time of political and social ferment. The larger themes are timeless, but this is a novel of unmistakeable time and place: of nineteenth century Russia. It explores the tensions between youthful radicalism and the traditional belief system of the older generation of the Russian aristocracy. It sets materialism against aestheticism in the collision of radical politics with emotion and traditional sensibilities. In this way it is often represented as anticipating the revolutions of the early twentieth century. But the novel is so much more than a political tract. All of the central characters are complex and all make their own choices in coming to terms with tensions that are at the centre of this great novel that captures a pivotal moment in Russian and European history.
