A masterpiece of Russian prose, Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time is translated with an introduction and notes by Natasha Randall, and a foreword by Neil LaBute, author of reasons to be pretty, in Penguin Modern Classics. The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled on publication. Its Byronic hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests.
