Hero of Our Time

Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, published in 1840, is a landmark of Russian literature and often called the first Russian psychological novel. It follows Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, a restless, cynical army officer serving in the Caucasus, a Byronic antihero who is charming, self-aware and quietly destructive.

The book is built as a set of linked tales told out of order. We first meet Pechorin through others: a travelling narrator and the kindly old captain Maxim Maximytch, who tells the story of Bela, a young Circassian princess Pechorin pursues. The later sections come from Pechorin's own journal, including his flirtation with Princess Mary at a spa town, his rivalry with the cadet Grushnitsky and his entanglement with Vera, a former love, and a closing tale in which a lieutenant gambles with fate.

Set against the mountains and spa towns of the Caucasus in the Russian Empire of the 1830s, the novel is a study of boredom, vanity and emptiness, and of what a gifted man does when nothing seems worth doing. It is short, vivid and ironic, and it has shaped Russian fiction ever since. Several English translations exist, including those by Vladimir Nabokov with Dmitri Nabokov, Philip Longworth, Marian Schwartz, Paul Foote and Nicolas Pasternak Slater.