About this audiobook
When Arkady Kirsanov returns to his family's country estate with his friend Yevgeny Bazarov, the visit soon unsettles the household. Bazarov, a young medical student who calls himself a nihilist, rejects inherited authority and values scientific inquiry and practical usefulness. His outspoken views bring him into conflict with Arkady's uncle Pavel Petrovich, whose aristocratic ideals seem to belong to a different world.
Yet Ivan Turgenev's novel is more than a contest between younger and older generations. Affection, pride and the wish to be understood complicate the arguments on both sides. Bazarov's feelings for the independent widow Anna Odintsova challenge his confidence that romantic love can be dismissed as an illusion. Personal experience begins to test the certainty of his theories.
Set in nineteenth-century Russia, the novel explores the uneasy relationship between conviction and feeling. It will appeal to readers who enjoy family tensions, subtle psychological portraits and stories in which no generation has a simple monopoly on truth.
