Descriere & specificații

Presented here together, in their entirety - in the original Russian and in a facing English translation, new for this edition - are two masterpieces of Russian literature by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), both set in the Caucasus: The Demon, a narrative poem, and A Hero of Our Time , a novel. The Demon was deemed so scandalous at the time it was written that it was first published in Russia only in 1856 - and then only in a handful of copies for the royal family! It tells of a beautiful Georgian princess, Tamara, who awakens long-forgotten feelings of love in a Demon when he sees her dancing on the eve of her wedding. After the untimely death of her would-be husband, Tamara enters a convent, but a voice continues to tempt her. At last the Demon appears to her, to profess his love... and Tamara's soul hangs in the balance... A Hero of Our Time is many things at once: a travelogue documenting the astounding natural beauty of the Caucasus and the spirit of its many peoples; an adventure novel with everything from kidnappings to duels; a catalogue of tragic romantic encounters; a novel of (bad) manners; and a disturbing psychological study of its infamous anti-hero, Pechorin, the first (alongside Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin) of many deeply conflicted - if not demonic - figures in Russian literature. As Lermontov himself makes clear, the idea that Pechorin is "heroic" is to be taken with a great deal of irony! Mirroring each other in many ways, these two works are productively read t