Oblomov

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) The sly, subversive side of the nineteenth-century Russian literary character -- the one which represents such a contrast to the titanic exertions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky -- was most fully realized in Ivan Goncharov's 1859 masterpiece, OBLOMOV. This magnificent farce about a gentleman who spends the better part of his life in bed is a reminder of the extent to which humor, in the hands of a comic genius, can be used to explore the absurdities and injustices of a social order.

Richard Freeborn is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of London. He has translated and edited many novels by Turgenev, and is the author of Turgenev, the Novelist's Novelist, The Rise of the Russian Novel, and The Russian Revolutionary Novel.