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"Small wonders"
--"Time Out London"
"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."
--Ron Rosenbaum, "The New York Observe"r --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
--"Time Out London"
"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."
--Ron Rosenbaum, "The New York Observe"r --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Product Description
At the end of a dinner party, the remaining guests drink wine and tell stories of their first love. For one of them, it will be a dark journey into his past, reawakening unbearable memories of his obsession with the beautiful Zinaida; and the cruelty and betrayal that followed …
United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love’s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love….
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First Sentence
The guests had left long ago. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The guests had left long ago. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
These six stories offer subtle variations on the theme of first love, often beautifully evoked through the first person narrative to highlight the autoboigraphical nature of some of the episodes. Turgenev creates contrasts of moods which capture either the ecstacy or misery of falling in love. For example, in the title piece, 'First Love', the young boy feels the bliss of his first crush and first kiss, which is finally defeated by his own father. The main message of the book is that nothing is permanent, and that love does not lead to a happy marriage nor to fullfilment. This is enhanced by the episodic nature of the tales which often capture just one moment of a larger timescale. The book is also historically interesting as it contains some of the first Russian literature to have become widely known throughout Europe in the nineteenth century. If you enjoy these stories I would recommend you try some of Turgenev's longer novels.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Simply beautiful. One of the most overlooked of the nineteenth-century writers, Turgenev (like his friend Maupassant) was a master craftsman as well as an amzing observer of people and scenes; this little book, together with Scenes From a Hunter's Album, is his best. And here is surely the best of all the translations into English from the Russian novels: V.S. Pritchett's lucid, pared-down style fits the bill so well. Don't look further for a translation of First Love. It also has a terrific little essay by Isaiah Berlin as an introduction. Well done to Penguin for keeping this in print for almost 30 years. Maybe they should try now to reprint the marvellous collections of short stories by Pritchett, too...
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Captures the frenzy of first-love with its highs and lows and renders them in beautiful, very Russian prose.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Beautiful but predictable...
Read for a uni reading-list. I liked some of the more poetic, descriptive moments, and enjoyed the changing perspective on the 'first love'. Some phrases really hit home. Read more
Published on 4 Sep 2009 by Ms. N. J. Dixon
Would be a fantastic teen movie
A tiny short story following the first crush of a 16 year old boy who finds that his father is his rival. Read more
Published on 25 May 2009 by Brownbear101
Moving short story about youth and love
An accessible translation allowed me to read this like any other story; nothing difficult about it. It is extremely moving in parts, as he loves for the first time a girl who many... Read more
Published on 22 May 2007 by greenwise design
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