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Cover of On the Eve by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

On the Eve

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

  • 234 pages · about 4 hours
  • First published 1873
  • 55 editions
  • Free to read
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1 About this book

The story revolves around Elena, a girl with a hypochondriacal mother and an idle father, a retired guards lieutenant with a mistress. On the eve of the Crimean War, Elena is pursued by a free-spirited sculptor (Shubin) and a serious-minded student (Berzyenev). But when Berzyenev's revolutionary Bulgarian friend, Insarov, meets Elena, they fall in love.

In secretly marrying Insarov Elena disappoints her mother and enrages her father, who had hoped to marry her to a dull, self-satisfied functionary, Kurnatovski. Insarov nearly dies from pneumonia and only partly recovers. On the outbreak of war Insarov tries to return with Elena to Bulgaria, but tragically dies in Venice. Elena takes Insarov's body to the Balkans for burial and then vanishes. Wikipedia.

  • Nihilism
  • Social life and customs
  • Social conditions
  • Fathers and sons

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3 About Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

1818–1883

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818–1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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