Primo amore (Первая любовь)

First Love, composed in 1860, is a "povest" (long short story) which, however, occupies a leading role in the author's artistic biography," Massimo Maurizio tells us in the volume's introduction. Romanticism, with its entire world, was already anachronistic at the time of writing, but it allowed the great Russian writer to open a critical—and at times complacent—window onto the progressive decay of a society.

And love? It is a useless parlor game, a whim not without its own malice. The youngest pays the price; at his "first love," he loses his innocence, being bypassed in the graces of the beautiful young princess he falls for by his own father (and with this, he likely takes a decisive, albeit painful, step in the transition from boy to man).

Author: Ivan Sergeevič Turgenev (Иван Сергеевич Тургенев)

He was a master of the Russian novel, famous for his elegant, objective style and for acting as a cultural bridge between Russia and the West. Unlike his more philosophical rivals, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Turgenev focused on social realism and the friction between generations. His masterpiece, Fathers and Sons, famously introduced the concept of "nihilism" to the world.

Though he was a wealthy landowner, he lived much of his life in Europe, following his lifelong love, the opera singer Pauline Viardot. This "Westernized" perspective allowed him to critique Russian society from the outside, most notably in A Sportsman’s Sketches, a book credited with humanizing serfs and influencing their eventual emancipation.