Fathers and Children

When the young graduate Arkady brings his friend Bazarov home for the summer, the household is thrown off balance by the visitor’s cool, uncompromising nihilism. Bazarov believes in nothing he cannot dissect or prove, and his contempt for tradition, art, and sentiment grates against Arkady’s gentle father and proud uncle. Then he meets the composed widow Anna Odintsova, and the feelings he has denied begin to surface against his will. Turgenev turns the quarrel between two generations of Russians into something larger, a portrait of a changing country caught between old certainties and new doubts. Bazarov became one of the most argued-over characters in Russian literature. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.