Oblomov

Ilya Ilyich Oblomov has turned doing nothing into something close to a philosophy. A landowner in his thirties, he spends whole days in his dressing gown, unable to answer a letter or visit his neglected estate, while his sharp friend Stolz and the lively Olga try to rouse him into ordinary life. Goncharov built a whole novel out of a man who cannot get off his sofa, and somehow made it tender, funny, and quietly devastating. The word oblomovshchina entered Russian to name exactly this kind of paralysis. Beneath the comedy sits a real question about will, love, and the pull of comfort. This free PDF and EPUB edition offers one of the great character studies in Russian fiction.