A Hero of Our Time

Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time (1840) is one of the
great classics of Russian nineteenth-century literature, is a novel of
unique structure, based on a series of short storied held together by a
Byronic hero, Pechorin, whose gifted but embittered nature typified the
so-called superfluous men of the 1830’s. The novel, however, raises
issues of imperialism, fate, free will and the limits of self-knowledge.
The
present study draws together the now considerable body of secondary
material on Lermontov’s novel, and offers new insights in the light of
the recent critical and theoretical trends on such aspects as
ethnicity, materialism, narrative implications of diary form and the
ludic dimensions of fate. This up-todate, comprehensive study of A Hero of Our Time will appeal to students at all levels of specialism.