'I remain in unchanged admiration for this bold, headstrong, carefree undertaking, a first novel published when the author was twenty-five, which proved to be the first prose masterpiece in Russian' Julian Barnes from his preface.

Published in Russian in April 1840, A Hero of Our Time reached English in 1853, under the title 'Sketches of Life in the Caucasus, by a Russe.' Full of towering landscapes and local colour, it can be read as the travelogue of a poet and serving officer, but also as a portrait of the romantic as self-destructive anti-hero.

Vladimir Nabokov's translation of A Hero of Our Time was published in the United States in 1958, the same year as Lolita: world fame was about to overtake this committed Russian living in America.

About the Author

Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1941) was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was an expatriate Russian and Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist.

Julian Barnes is the author of several books of stories, essays, a translation of Alphonse Daudet's In the Land of Pain, and numerous novels, including the 2011 Man Booker Prize winning novel The Sense of an Ending.

Book Information
ISBN 9781529431216
Author Julian Barnes
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint riverrun
Publisher Quercus Publishing