Vera

Or, The Nihilists

by Oscar Wilde

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Pages: 58

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Read by Elizabeth Klett, Arielle Lipshaw, Martin Geeson and others · 2 h 6 min · 5 parts

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Prologue
15:02
Act 1
26:49
Act 2
38:25
Act 3
24:32
Act 4
21:14

Vera (1880) is a public domain work.

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About this book

A winter stop at a Russian inn turns questions of family and duty into a conflict over political freedom. Vera Sabouroff, the innkeeper's daughter, worries about her brother Dmitri, who has gone to Moscow to study law. When soldiers arrive with prisoners bound for Siberia, she challenges an officer's claim that peasants should simply obey their masters. She offers her mother's necklace to gain access to the tired men and serves them food.

Oscar Wilde presents this drama in a prologue and four acts, with the main action set in Moscow in 1800. The palace scenes place the Czar's fear of opposition beside Prince Paul's calculated advice and the heir's appeals for mercy. Sharp exchanges between rulers and ministers give the political struggle a satirical edge. Readers interested in drama about authority, resistance and responsibility will find those arguments voiced through both ordinary people and the imperial court.

About the author

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish author, poet and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential dramatists in London in the early 1890s.