A Hero of Our Time

"You will say that no man can be so bad...

"And I will ask you why, after accepting all the villains of tragedy and romance, you refuse to believe in Pechorin... Perhaps he comes too close to the bone?"

Lermontov's hero, Pechorin, who so antagonized the critics, is certainly a dangerous man, Byronic in his wasted gifts, his cynicism, his predatory and flamboyant energy for any kind of action that will stave off boredom. Here, in five linked episodes, Lermontov builds up the portrait of a man caught in and expressing the sickness of his times. It is a marvellous novel and an early landmark in Russian literature, inspiring Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov among others in the great stream of nineteenth-century masters that followed.

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