Virgin Soil: New Translation

Turgenevs final novel, Virgin Soil traces the destinies of several middle-class revolutionaries who seek to go to the people by working on the land and instilling democratic ideas in the countrysides locals. They include the daydreaming impoverished young tutor Nezhdanov employed by the liberal councillor Sipyagin and his vain and beautiful wife Valentina the naive young radical Maryanna and the progressive factory manager Solomin. Their liaisons, intrigues and conspiracies, set against the backdrop of Tsarist Russia, form the matter of Turgenevs most ambitious and elaborate work, which cemented the authors place in the West as Russias foremost novelist while at the same time proving controversial at home culminating in the arrest of fifty-two real-life revolutionaries barely a month after it was published.