Richard Freeborn Ordre des livres (chronologique)

Fathers and Sons is one of the greatest nineteenth century Russian novels, and has long been acclaimed as Turgenev's finest work. It is a political novel set in a domestic context, with a universal theme, the generational divide between fathers and sons. Set in 1859 at the moment when the Russian autocratic state began to move hesitantly towards social and political reform, the novel explores the conflict between the liberal-minded fathers of Russian reformist sympathies and their free-thinking intellectual sons whose revolutionary ideology threatened the stability of the state.

This novel 'portrays' the conflicts between the older aristocratic generation and the new democratic intelligentsia in Russia during the 1860's. The chief character is the nihilish 'Bazarov,' who espouses a strictly materialistic attitude toward life. His chief adversary is 'Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov,' an uncle of Bazarov's friend Arkadi, who upholds the aristocratic traditions in the face of Bazarov's ridicule. The novel, which is considered one of Turgenev's finest works, originally aroused widespread controversy in Russia with both radicals and conservations denying the accuracy of the portrayal of Bazarov. One side considered it slandered the younger generation; the other accused Turgenev of presenting too favorable a picture of the nihilist.