A Hero of Our Time

The only completed novel by Lermontov, standing at the origins of Russian psychological prose. The author called his complex, dangerous, and incredibly captivating hero the embodiment of the vices of his generation, but readers notice in Pechorin above all a unique personality.

“The Main Books of Russian Literature” is a collaborative series by the publishing house “Alpina. Proza” and the online project “Polka.” The works published in it are chosen by contemporary writers, critics, literary scholars, and educators. This is both an attempt to define what the Russian literary canon looks like today and a new perspective on well-known works: each book is accompanied by a detailed article by the authors of “Polka.”