A Hero of Our Time [Paperback]

The first example of the psychological novel in Russia,A Hero of Our Timeinfluenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov, and other great nineteenth-century masters that followed. Its hero, Pechorin, is Byronic in his wasted gifts, his cynicism, and his desire for any kind of action-good or ill-that will stave off boredom. Outraging many critics when it was first published in 1840,A Hero of Our Timefollows Pechorin as he embarks on an exciting adventure involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers.

This edition includes a new introduction, chronology, suggestions for further reading, maps, and full explanatory notes.

 

Natasha Randall's English, in her new translation, has exactly the right degree of loose velocity. . . . (Nabokov's version, the best-known older translation, is a bit more demure than Randall's, less savage.)  
-James Wood, London Review of Books 

[A] smart, spirited new translation.  
-The Boston Globe 

One of the most vivid and persuasive portraits of the male ego ever put down on paper.  
-Neil LaBute, from the ForewordPaul Foote was, until his retirement, a university lecturer in Russian and fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford.I

BELA

I was traveling post from Tiflis. My cart's entire load consisted of one small valise, which was half filled with travel notes about Georgia. Of these, the greater part, fortunately for you, have been lost, and the valise containing my remaining possessions, fortunately for me, is intact.

The sun was already beginning to drop behind the snowy ridge when I rode into the Koyshaur Valley. The driver, an Ossetian, drove the horses tirelessly in order to make it up Koyshaur Mountain by nightfall, singing songs at the top of his voice. A glorious spot, this valley! On every side of the mountain are impregnable reddish cliffs hung with green ivy and crowned with clusters lÃ%