A Hero of Our Time is indeed a portrait, but not of one man. It is a portrait built up of all our generation's vices in full bloom. You will again tell me that a human being cannot be so wicked, and I will reply that if you can believe in the existence of all the villains of tragedy and romance, why wouldn't believe that there was a Pechorin? If you could admire far more terrifying and repulsive types, why aren't you more merciful to this character, even if it is fictitious? Isn't it because there's more truth in it than you might wish?

One of the iconic characters of all Russian literature, Grigori Aleksandrovich Pechorin is the ultimate “superfluous man.” An aristocratic rake who loves the game of manipulating the lives of those around him, he callously kidnaps a Chechen teenager to be his bride, wagers the life of an inveterate gambler in a kind of philosophical Russian roulette, and engages in dangerous games with Crimean smugglers. “A Hero of Our Time” is really a collection of stories rather than a novel, culminating...

Poetry by two radical poets, born in the same year, who suffered exile and punishment under the Tsarist Russian empire. Taras Shevchenko is celebrated as the founder of Ukrainian literature , while Lermontov wrote in Russian. Both died young, Lermontov in a duel and Shevchenko as a result of his sufferings in exile. This collection includes Ethel Voynich's moving biography of Taras Shevchenko and translations of six short lyrics written over the course of his life, as well as her translation of Lermontov's narrative poem, The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov. - Summary by Phil Benson