Sketches from a Hunter's Album: The Complete Edition (Penguin Classics) Paperback – December 10, 1990

These stories have two merits. They contain descriptions of nature as sharp and clear as Thoreau's And they give us a clear sense of what life was like for serfs in the 1840's in Russia. This book had the effect of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Russia and helped bring an end to serfdom, but it is a far better book. The stories are compelling, and the people are realistically portrayed, faults and all. The translation is superb.

This is my first foray into Turgenev. It was so entertaining that I would like to review his other literary works in the near future. I enjoyed how the author creates each story as a 'sketch' in which he allegorizes the plight of peasantry in 19th century Russia. The stories are told through fascinating and vivid characters which sometimes are told by the author as an observer, a narrator or even in the 3rd person. Turgenev wrote this collection of 'sketches' while on multiple hunting expeditions in the regions of southern Russia. The expeditions in themselves are a travelogue between the countryside and village and has a similarity of illustration by another early 19th century author, Astolphe de Custine in "Letters from Russia." The difference is in their style of writing and the usage of personal experiences to portray the inequality of the caste system. In Turgenev's "Sketches from a Hunter's Album," the episodic stories which exemplifies the author's best work in demonstrating the human condition of love, death, poverty, destitution, famine and master and 'slave' are in those characters of Living Relic, Bezhin Lea, Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands, Pyotr Petrovich Karateev and Chertopkhanov & Nedopyuskin. This novel is an excellent first read for Ivan Turgenev and should be a part of your library.

I don't like short stories, never have and I don't know why. I had to read this collection for a course and found it pretty good. The professor told us that this was Hemingway's favorite book which Hemingway had read over and over. In fact, Hemingway modeled some of his own stories on those here, particularly the Hemingway stories where nothing happens except someone might make a pot of coffee. But let's face it, these are not so much stories (narrations of events in time) as sketches of characters. Any plot would be too much plot and would interfer with the general effect, which is to show us the life and times of Russians before the liberation of the serfs. I liked "The Singers", as other reviewer have, but the true masterpiece, worth the entire price of the book, is "Living Relic." Nothing happens in that story except we learn again the beauty and strength of the human spirit and in the process the redemptive nature of true literature.

Although it's a collection of short stories, i.e. sketches, it has a strong unifying theme and coherence. The question of slavery, i.e. serfdom, is central and well portrayed. The characters are intensely honest and quite amusing. The scenes of nature make you realize that Turgenev was a first class naturalist. Highly pleasurable reading and historical context is both interesting and important.

"Literature is news that stays news" and that is very much the case with Turgenev's masterwork. I have never been a landowner, hunter, peasant or serf yet Turgenev makes me feel as if I'm inside these lives. Chapter by chapter, sketch by sketch, he draws us in. He makes me care about these people, their life's circumstances and when all is said and done leaves me to ponder the bigger questions of existence. Somehow there's a connection in my mind with Hemingway-without the deliberate cruelty. Turgenev leaves so much beneath the surface.I've read these sketches completely at least half a dozen times since middle school and have been constantly on the lookout for a modern one volume translation. This Penguin Classics edition fulfills that niche in my imaginary Literature Hot 100 list nicely.

This was Turgenev's first "novel" (it's really a collection of short stories with a common theme) and a brilliant achievement, given the time and place.I only know a little Russian and I don't have a Russian copy of the book, so what I'm about to say is intuitive (or opinionated, you decide), but in this translation, as with others of Turgenev by Freeborn, I sense a kind of literalness that likely makes it a good trot rather than a representation of what Turgenev sounds like to a Russian reader.Compare it, for example, with the old Cresset Press edition translated by Natasha Hepburn (I think that's her name), which reads better and seems more to reflect Turgenev's reputation as a prose stylist ("prose poet", if you like, but that always sounds like an insult to me: a novel isn't a poem!).Even better, compare it with David Magarshack's translation of SPRING TORRENTS, which I'm certain is accurate, since Magarshack was fluent in both English and Russian, and which gives you the sense of a true stylist.Freeborn's version of FATHERS AND SONS has about the same effect. If you read Bernard Guerney's version of this masterpiece, I think you'd be much more impressed by Turgenev's prose.I think Freeborn is a great scholar and critic of Turgenev (he wrote an excellent study of him for Oxford U. Press), but translations of Russian are best left to Russian speakers who are also fluent in English.