Обыкновенная история

A young provincial idealist arrives in St. Petersburg with poetry in his heart and romantic notions about life, only to discover that the capital chews up dreamers and spits out functioning members of society. Alexander Aduyev believes he is destined for greatness, but as the years pass, his poetry gathers dust, his mistress grows tiresome, and he gradually transforms into the very sort of practical, jaded man he once despised. Goncharov's 1847 masterpiece dissects the painful alchemy of growing up: how society refines us, how we ref ourselves, and whether the finished product is worth the raw material lost. Sharp, unsentimental, and often painfully funny, this is the novel that launched Goncharov's informal trilogy and established him as a ruthlessly perceptive chronicler of Russian provincial youth stumbling toward modernity. For anyone who has ever wondered what happened to their younger, more foolish self.