A Hero of Our Time

De: Mikhail Lermontov

Narrado por: Nicholas Boulton

Grigori Aleksandrovich Pechorin is an enigma: arrogant, cocky, melancholic, brave, cynic, romantic, loner, socialite, soldier, free soul, and yet, victim of the world, he eludes definition and remains a mystery to those who know him. Just who is he? And what does he hope to achieve?

Evolving from first person to third person, and then into a diary, A Hero of Our Time takes on a variety of forms to interrogate Pechorin's cryptic character and his unusual philosophy, providing breathtaking descriptions of the Caucasus along the way.

The novel has been hailed as an influence on such writers as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, and is a striking take on Lord Byron's "superfluous man"; it harks back to the teaching of Machiavelli, while anticipating the future work of Nietzsche.

Hailed by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the greatest Russian novels, the book has been referenced in novels by Albert Camus and Ian Fleming, and films by Ingmar Bergman.

Translators: J. H. Wisdom and Marr Murray

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2017 Naxos AudioBooks

Loved it!

I really loved this book. The picturesque setting of Georgia, the Romantic symbols, and the forces at work behind the story all were moving. I would recommend it to anyone interested in literature, Romanticism, and Russian culture.

Eloquent performance of a masterpiece

I wish this was a longer work. What a breathtaking story, with vivid imagery, strong characters, and descriptions of lives that struggled to find meaning.

Sarcastic Title

Felt unfinished. Story about a man reading a diary of a cruel utterly self serving person who is quite aware of what he is. The diarist vacillates between being prideful of his manipulations and noting that he has wasted his life. He does daring things in part because he doesn’t value his life. Part of it feeling unfinished is that we never return to the reader of the diary. It’s still a well written and rather captivating book… haunting.

Avoid story comes to an abrupt end

It is a pleasant book, the protagonist is a tad tiresome but the story has a good rhythm and, if it is not a page turner, it is far from being boring, still on the whole it is somehow disjointed and ends abruptly as if the author run out of paper.

Important but not entertaining

This was the first Russian novel in prose. It is important as an artifact and to understand the development of Russian literature, but not an enjoyable listen. Anything by Tolstoy is much better.