A Hero of Our Time

A masterpiece of Russian prose, Lermontov’s only novel was influential for many later nineteenth-century authors, including Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov.A brilliant new translation of a perennial favorite of Russian literature The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests. Chronicling his unforgettable adventures in the Caucasus involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers, this classic tale of alienation influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov in Lermontov’s own century, and finds its modern-day counterparts in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, and the films and plays of Neil LaBute.

Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841) made several journeys to the Caucasus before entering St, Petersburg Guards’ school, where he began writing poetry and autobiographical dramas in prose. Influenced by Byron, he is renowned as Russia’s one true Romantic poet. Lermontov greatly influenced Dostoyevsky and Blok; while Tolstoy and Chekhov regarded his prose as a model. Natasha Randall (translator/introducer) has published translations of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (shortlisted for the 2008 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize) and Osip Mandelstam’s poetry as well as the work of contemporary writers Arkady Dragomoshchenko, Alexander Skidan, and Olga Zondberg. A frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, she lives in London. Neil LaBute (foreword) is a film director, screenwriter and playwright. He is best known for his play and film In the Company of Men and his films Possession, The Shape of Things, and The Wicker Man.