Virgin Soil (Hardcover)

from Dreesie

I was expecting an upper-class-activists-go-to-live-with-the-peasants sort of book. This is not that at all. The upper class activists are here. Are they wealthy? Not seemingly, but they also seem to have money. They are not peasants. This book is more of a satire of these sort of people--from Pe...

from john257hopper

This novel is about the narodniks in 1860s Russia, intellectuals who went into the countryside to attempt to raise the class consciousness of the peasantry and persuade them to rise up against their oppressors, but who met with almost total incomprehension and opposition from a section of a socie...

from DRFP

Turgenev's last novel isn't his best but it's certainly better than the reputation it appears to have. The book is divided into two parts and I find a marked difference in quality. The first half is somewhat rambling and almost a little directionless as Turgenev artificially forces in encounters ...

from timjones

I agree with the reviewers who have already said that this is, in footballing parlance, a novel of two halves. I found the first 200 or so pages rather laborious, as the characters are assembled in Turgenev's default country-house setting - a setting masterfully sketched in [Fathers and Sons] and...

from xine2009

Wonderfully told story of young people trying change and survive Russian society.