Ivan Goncharov

Filled with dreams of pursuing a career as a poet, the young Alexander Aduev moves from the country to St Petersburg, where he takes up lodgings next to his uncle Pyotr, a shrewd and world-weary businessman. As his ideals are challenged by disappointment in the fields of love, friendship and poetical ambition, Alexander must decide whether to return to the homely values he has left behind or adapt to the ruthless rules and morals of city life. Told in the author’s trademark humorous style and presented in a sparkling new translation by Stephen Pearl, The Same Old Story – Goncharov’s first novel, preceding his masterpiece Oblomov by twelve years – is a study of lost illusions and rude spiritual awakening in the modern world.

First published in 1859, Oblomov is an indisputable classic of Russian literature, comparable in its stature to such masterpieces as Gogol’s Dead Souls, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. The book centres on the figure of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a member of the dying class of the landed gentry, who spends most of his time lying in bed gazing at life in an apathetic daze, encouraged by his equally lazy servant Zakhar and routinely swindled by his acquaintances. But this torpid existence comes to an end when, spurred on by his crumbling finances, the love of a woman and the reproaches of his friend, the hard-working Stoltz, Oblomov finds that he must engage with the real world and face up to his commitments. Rich in situational comedy, psychological complexity and social satire, Oblomov – here presented in Stephen Pearl’s award-winning translation, the first major English-language version of the novel in more than fifty years – is a timeless novel and a monument to human idleness.

Set at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when idleness was still looked upon by Russia’s serf-owning rural gentry as a plausible and worthy goal, Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov follows the travails of an unlikely hero, a young aristocrat incapable of making a decision. Indolent, inattentive, incurious, given to daydreaming and procrastination, Oblomov clearly predates the ideal of the industrious modern man, yet he is impossible not to admire through Goncharov’s masterful prose. Translator Marian Schwartz breathes new life into this Russian masterpiece in this, the first translation from the generally recognized definitive edition of the original, as well the first to attempt to replicate in English Goncharov’s wry humor and all-embracing humanity. Replete with ingenious social satire and cutting criticism of nineteenth-century Russian society, this edition of Oblomov will introduce new readers to the novel that Leo Tolstoy praised as “a truly great work, the likes of which one has not seen for a long, long time.”

Roman Goncharova "Obyknovennaja istorija" byl vpervye opublikovan esche v 1847 godu. Odnako i v XIX, i v XX, i v XXI veke polno romantichnykh junoshej iz provintsii, kotorye, podobno geroju romana Aleksandru Aduevu, rvutsja v stolitsy, mechtaja "izmenit mir", - a potom, stolknuvshis s zhestokoj realnostju, terjajut junosheskie illjuzii i prevraschajutsja v tsinikov i pragmatikov, gotovykh idti k uspekhu "po golovam". "Obyknovennaja istorija" - odin iz samykh glubokikh i psikhologicheski tochnykh romanov russkogo realizma XIX veka.

Roman "Oblomov" - vershina tvorchestva I. A. Goncharova. Opublikovannyj v 1859 godu, etot roman vyzval neodnoznachnuju reaktsiju kritikov. Goncharov ne tolko pokazal udivitelnyj i paradoksalnyj tip russkogo cheloveka, no i sdelal ego imja naritsatelnym, opredeliv takoj obraz zhizni kak "oblomovschina". Odni videli v Oblomove simvol kosnosti Rossii i znamenie vremeni. Po mneniju N. A. Dobroljubova, "len i apatija Oblomova - edinstvennaja pruzhina dejstvija vo vsej ego istorii". Drugie kritiki opravdyvali glavnogo geroja romana. Tak, A. V. Druzhinin pisal: "On dorog nam kak samostojatelnaja i chistaja natura, vpolne nezavisimaja ot toj skholastiko-moralnoj istaskannosti, chto pjatnaet soboju ogromnoe bolshinstvo ljudej..." Odni traktovali roman kak satiricheskoe proizvedenie, drugie otmechali v nem i liricheskoe nachalo, i tonkij psikhologizm. Eta originalnaja i edinstvennaja v svoem rode kniga do sikh por vyzyvaet spory, ne utrativ svoego znachenija.

Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a member of Russia's dying aristocracy - a man so lazy that he has given up his job in the Civil Service, neglected his books, insulted his friends and found himself in debt. Too apathetic to do anything about his problems, he lives in a grubby, crumbling apartment, waited on by Zakhar, his equally idle servant. Terrified by the bustle and activity necessary to participate in the real world, Oblomov manages to avoid work, postpone change and - finally - risks losing the love of his life. Written with sympathetic humour and compassion, Oblomov made Goncharov famous throughout Russia on its publication in 1859, as readers saw in this story of a man whose defining characteristic is indolence, the portrait of an entire class in decline.

AN EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY HARDCOVER CLASSIC. Ivan Goncharov s 1859 masterpiece a magnificent farce about a gentleman who spends the better part of his life in bed brilliantly employs humor to explore the absurdities and injustices of an outmoded social order. Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a good-hearted nobleman whose majestic slothfulness renders him incapable of making decisions or taking the simplest of actions. Raised in idyllic comfort on his family s country estate, he has become so lazy as an adult that he lets his affairs deteriorate and allows unscrupulous people to take advantage of his weakness and good nature. Living in a shabby apartment and tended by his indolent serf, Zahar, he relies on the efforts of his increasingly exasperated friend Stolz to protect him from himself. Falling in love briefly rouses Oblomov to exert himself in courting Olga, a young woman Stoltz introduces him to, but his astonishing lethargy eventually defeats even their romance. Wildly successful upon its publication, "Oblomov "was taken as a slyly subversive indictment of the uselessness and corruption of the nobility, but the character of Goncharov s superfluous man is rendered in such vivid detail and epic richness that it transcends satire and achieves iconic status, earning a place among the masterworks of Russian literature. Translated by Natalie Duddington"

Goncharov's gentle satire on the failings of 19th-century Russian gentry and bureaucracy turns into something deeper and richer than satire, as he probes the character of a protagonist whose constitutional lethargy becomes a symbol for the malaise of the human spirit in an alienating world.