7 best short stories by Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev poured into his writings not only a deep concern for the future of his native land but also an integrity of craft that has ensured his place in Russian literature. The many years that he spent in western Europe were due in part to his personal and artistic stand as a liberal between the reactionary tsarist rule and the spirit of revolutionary radicalism that held sway in contemporary artistic and intellectual circles in Russia. Turgenev's artistic purity made him one of the favorites of novelists of the same generation, such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad, who preferred Turgenev to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. James, who wrote no less than five critical essays on the work of the Russian writer, said that "his merit of form is of the first order" and praised his "exquisite delicacy" that "makes many of his rivals seem to stop us, in comparison, by violent means, and to present us by comparison vulgar things. " Vladimir Nabokov, famous for his casual departure from many of the great writers, praised Turgenev's "fluid musical prose," but criticized his "epilogues" and "the trivial treatment of entanglements." A Desperate Character Knock, Knock, Knock A Strange Story The Dog The District Doctor The Inn Mumu