About the Author

Mikhail Lermontov 1814 - 1841, a Russian Romantic writer and poet, sometimes called the poet of the Caucasus, was the most important presence in Russian poetry after Alexander Pushkin's death until his own death in a duel four years later, at the age of 26. Lermontov's life is one of the most epic and dramatic in the history of literature. After attacking the tsar as complicit in the de facto assassination of Pushkin, Lermontov himself fell in a duel that many believe was also the work of a tsarist conspiracy designed to silence nascent rebellion. His major works, which can be readily quoted from memory by many Russians, suffer from the generally poor quality of translation from Russian to English - Lermontov therefore, remains largely unknown to English-speaking readers.

Reviews

This study of a man - and a society - in crisis was to become one of the most important books of its time - I have read this novel several times, young and old, always hooked. - Doris Lessing No one in Russia has ever written such prose, so precise, so beautiful, so exquisite. - Nikolai Gogol Still just a boy, and he wrote A Hero of Our Time! - Anton Chekhov In A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov managed to create a fictional person whose romantic dash to cynicism, tiger-like suppleness and eagle eye, hot blood and cool head, tenderness and taciturnity, elegance and brutality, delicacy of perception and harsh passion to dominate, ruthlessness and awareness of it, are of lasting appeal to readers of all countries and centuries. - Vladimir Nabokov