Ivan Goncharov Books In Order

Novels

A Common Story (1847)
Oblomov (1859)
The Precipice (1869)

Novels Book Covers

Ivan Goncharov Books Overview

A Common Story

The Same Old Story 1847 tells the story of Alexander Aduyev who leaves the idyllic setting of his home in the country to seek his fortune and make a career in St. Petersburg under the guidance and protection of his uncle, a government official. Such is the beginning of this ‘ordinary story’. Alexander Aduyev, a ‘romantic three times over’ to quote Vissarion Belinsky gradually sheds his idyllic notions and develops into a heartless and calculating climber.

Oblomov

Set at the beginning of the nineteenth century, before the ideal of industrious modern man, when idleness was still looked upon by Russia’s serf owning rural gentry as a plausible and worthy goal, there was Oblomov. Indolent, inattentive, incurious, given to daydreaming and procrastination indeed, given to any excuse to remain horizontal Oblomov is hardly the stuff of heroes. Yet, he is impossible not to admire. The image of this gentle daydreamer, roused to action for one brief period of ardent but begotten love, is a fixture of Russian culture. He is forgiven for his weakness and beloved for his shining soul. Ivan Goncharov s masterpiece is not just ingenious social satire, but also a sharp criticism of nineteenth century Russian society. Translator Marian Schwartz breathes new life into Goncharov s voice in this first translation from the generally recognized definitive edition of the Russian original, edited by L.S. Geiro and published in Leningrad in 1987. Schwartz also includes a Gastronomical Glossary in this edition. The Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov 1812 1891 was born in Simbirsk, Russia. He served for thirty years as a minor government official and traveled widely. His short stories, critiques, essays, and memoirs were published posthumously in 1919. Oblomov was his most popular and critically acclaimed novel during his lifetime. Marian Schwartz has translated Russian literature for over thirty years. She has published over two dozen book length translations, along with twenty issues of Russian Studies in Literature. She is the principal English translator of the works of Nina Berberova and is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association.

The Precipice

Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov 1812 1891 was one of the leading members of the great circle of Russian writers who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, gathered around the SOVREMMENIK Contemporary under Nekrasov’s editorship a circle including Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Byelinsky, and Herzen. He had not the marked genius of the first three of these; but that he is so much less known to the western reader is perhaps also due to the fact that there was nothing sensational either in his life or his literary method. His strength was in the steady delineation of character, conscious of, but not deeply disturbed by, the problems which were obsessing and distracting smaller and greater minds. Goncharov had passed many years in Governmental service and had, in fact, reached the age of thirty five when his first work, ‘A Common Story,’ was published. ‘The Frigate Pallada,’ which followed, is a lengthy descriptive account of an official expedition to Japan and Siberia in which Goncharov took part. After the publication of ‘The Precipice,’ its author was moved to write an essay, ‘Better Late Than Never,’ in which he attempted to explain that the purpose of his three novels was to present the eternal struggle between East and West the lethargy of the Russian and the ferment of foreign influences. Thus he ranged himself more closely with the great figures among his contemporaries. Two other volumes consist of critical study and reminiscence.