Rudin, Turgenev's first novel, is a subtle examination of human weakness which foreshadows many of the themes in the author's later work, with its lead character personifying the type of the "superfluous man" which came to dominate much of the literature of nineteenth-century Russia.

Ivan Turgenev's On the Eve, here presented in a brand new translation, is now recognized as one of the masterpieces of Russian literature and an essential document of the upheaval that dominated Russian society in the years prior to the Crimean War.