A Month in the Country

By Ivan Turgenev and Iwan Turgenjew

Book Overview

'Every kind of love, whether happy or unhappy, is a real calamity if you surrender to it wholly...'This heart-felt sentiment, expressed by Turgenev's unfortunate character Rakitin sums up the central predicament of A Month in the Country, Turgenev's most celebrated play. Completed in 1850, it explores the complexities of that most universal of themes, the eternal love triangle; and in it Turgenev uses his grasp of psychology and brilliant technique to turn this subject into a dazzling tragicomedy.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670487058
• ISBN13: 9780670487059
• Release Date: February 1982
• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Length: 127 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 20.0" x 20.0" x 20.0"

Customer Reviews

Turgenev's skill shines through

This is not a dramatic masterpiece, but anyone who appreciates Turgenev will benefit from it. I was motivated to read this play in preparation for its performance by the United Players of Vancouver next month.

Turgenev's greatest play

A reviewer before me said Turgenev came in the footsteps of the other great Russians. He might have been after Gogol, whom was the first master of fiction to turn to realism, but he was basically a frontrunner of both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (and Chekhov). At Gogol's death in 1852 Turgenev wrote an eulogy on Gogol and published the short-story cycle "A Sportsman's Sketches", and was banished to his estate. After this he went abroad and spent most of his time in Paris, where he more than anybody made Russian literature known to the outside world. His greatest novels were "A Nest of Gentlefolk", "On the Eve" and of course "Fathers and Sons". "A Month in the Country" is a pleasant and amusing play of the day, and his very best. One that later also highly inspired Chekhov. Further reading recommended: "The Essential Turgenev".

Russian+19th century=good

In the footsteps of other such amazing Russian authors comes Turgenev, and his wonderfully written play 'A Month in the Country.' If you love Russian literature of this time period, and you like Love triangles, and plays, then this story can not go wrong.