A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov

Lermontov’s only full-scale novel, which prophetically describes the duel in which he later lost his own life. The hero of the novel, Pechorin is an intense individual, a military officer who kidnaps beautiful daughter of Circassian tribesman and who, according to Lermantov’s own introduction, is a composite portrait, made up of all the vices which flourish, full grown, amongst the generation of the time.

On July 25, 1841, at Pyatigorsk, fellow soldier Nikolai Martynov, who had been the butt of Lermontov’s jokes, challenged Lermontov to a duel. The duel took place two days later at the foot of Mashuk mountain. Lermontov deliberately chose the edge of a precipice for the duel, so that if either combatant was wounded, he would fall and his fate would be sealed. Lermontov was killed by Martynov’s first shot. Much of his best verse was posthumously discovered in his pocket-book.

This edition is a new revision aiming to bring English translation as close as possible to Lermontov’s original vision. There has been some confusion in various English editions containing entries of Pechorin’s diary, not present in Lermontov’s original and various other alterations of Lermnontov’s original structure of the novel. This edition has been compiled after close examination of Russian originals and follows author’s intended structure. Released under Urban Romantics imprint , aiming to give readers a complete experience of both classic and contemporary romantic writing.

About The Author

Mikhail Lermontov 1814 – 1841, a Russian Romantic writer and poet, sometimes called the poet of the Caucasus, was the most important presence in Russian poetry after Alexander Pushkin’s death until his own death in a duel four years later, at the age of 26. Lermontov’s life is one of the most epic and dramatic in the history of literature. After attacking the tsar as complicit in the de facto assassination of Pushkin, Lermontov himself fell in a duel that many believe was also the work of a tsarist conspiracy designed to silence nascent rebellion. His major works, which can be readily quoted from memory by many Russians, suffer from the generally poor quality of translation from Russian to English – Lermontov therefore, remains largely unknown to English-speaking readers.

Reviews

This study of a man – and a society – in crisis was to become one of the most important books of its time… I have read this novel several times, young and old, always hooked’ – Doris Lessing

No one in Russia has ever written such prose, so precise, so beautiful, so exquisite. – Nikolai Gogol

Still just a boy, and he wrote A Hero of Our Time! – Anton Chekhov

In A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov managed to create a fictional person whose romantic dash to cynicism, tiger-like suppleness and eagle eye, hot blood and cool head, tenderness and taciturnity, elegance and brutality, delicacy of perception and harsh passion to dominate, ruthlessness and awareness of it, are of lasting appeal to readers of all countries and centuries. – Vladimir Nabokov

Where to Order

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