Buy new:
$20.84
FREE delivery Friday, May 10 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Ships from: Amazon
Sold by: Prime Deals, USA
$20.84
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Friday, May 10 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 7 hrs 1 min
Only 13 left in stock - order soon.
$$20.84 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$20.84
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon
Ships from
Amazon
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
$9.39
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Friday, May 10 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 7 hrs 1 min
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$20.84 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$20.84
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Home of the Gentry (Penguin Classics) Paperback – January 1, 1970

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 73 ratings
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$20.84","priceAmount":20.84,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"20","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"84","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"dZIcwaJLnYafulvlSAA1fTNy3NrFxYHPWBXPnI2oYaTn1ta5kz09nR7V8eGg1n4EdcYgYMH6jb2qkHddESRRv2IOUXGOKCbvxi7j%2Be3OVUR5cURUWAe06%2FR06PCfx0QHcNgkGvkP%2BmAi1u9maIZTLlcok5ChsTCgoWf8R3KkcxzA17FWCjcxkg%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$9.39","priceAmount":9.39,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"39","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"dZIcwaJLnYafulvlSAA1fTNy3NrFxYHPJvtpTShJfSuUf5ISjuSrIrlHu1IMdFoAa1ee1HMDowJgKP5C0f4N3rgJMJwgna08pPamVsW1pyiKZnrC4Uo1AqprdGruGYNdFIAqVzqDaRGweYPgtwRRYjMyyS5xPjLGvmtoDyhOtT51u89C7M1bGcZYfiFMJSwv","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

On one level the novel is about the homecoming of Lavretsky, who, broken and disillusioned by a failed marriage, returns to his estate and finds love again - only to lose it. The sense of loss and of unfulfilled promise, beautifully captured by Turgenev, reflects his underlying theme that humanity is not destined to experience happiness except as something ephemeral and inevitably doomed. On another level Turgenev is presenting the homecoming of a whole generation of young Russians who have fallen under the spell of European ideas that have uprooted them from Russia, their 'home', but have proved ultimately superfluous. In tragic bewilderment, they attempt to find reconciliation with their land.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    208 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Classics
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1970
  5. Reading age
    18 years and up
  6. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0140442243
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0140442243
  9. See all details
Next page
The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Frequently bought together

Home of the Gentry (Penguin Classics)
$20.84
Get it as soon as Friday, May 10
Only 13 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by Prime Deals, USA and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
+
Sketches from a Hunter's Album: The Complete Edition (Penguin Classics)
$15.00
Get it as soon as Friday, May 10
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
First Love and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)
$9.95
Get it as soon as Friday, May 10
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born in 1818 in the Province of Orel, and suffered during his childhood from a tyrannical mother. After the family had moved to Moscow in 1827 he entered Petersburg University where he studied philosophy. When he was nineteen he published his first poems and, convinced that Europe contained the source of real knowledge, went to the University of Berlin. After two years he returned to Russia and took his degree at the University of Moscow. In 1843 he fell in love with Pauline Garcia-Viardot, a young Spanish singer, who influenced the rest of his life; he followed her on her singing tours in Europe and spent long periods in the French house of herself and her husband, both of whom accepted him as a family friend. He sent his daughter by a sempstress to be brought up among the Viardot children. After 1856 he lived mostly abroad, and he became the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe; he was a well-known figure in Parisian literary circles, where his friends included Flaubert and the Goncourt brothers, and an honorary degree was conferred on him at Oxford. His series of six novels reflect a period of Russian life from 1830s to the 1870s: they are Rudin (1855),A House of Gentlefolk (1858), On the Eve (1859; a Penguin Classic), Fathers and Sons (1861), Smoke(1867) and Virgin Soil (1876). He also wrote plays, which include the comedy A Month in the Country; short stories and Sketches from a Hunter&;s Album (a Penguin Classic); and literary essays and memoirs. He died in Paris in 1883 after being ill for a year, and was buried in Russia.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born in 1818 in the province of Oryol. After the family had moved to Moscow in 1827 he entered St Petersburg University where he studied philosophy. When he was nineteen he published his first poems and went to the University of Berlin. After two years he returned to Russia and took his degree at the University of Moscow. After 1856 he lived mostly abroad, and he became the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe. He wrote many novels, plays, short stories and novellas, of which First Love (1860) is the most famous. He died in Paris in 1883.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics (January 1, 1970)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140442243
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140442243
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 73 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
73 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Guillermo Maynez
5.0 out of 5 stars Remembrance of things gone
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2009
Verified Purchase
Already in his thirties, Lavretsky returns to his hometown of O... in Russia. He descends form a strange family of landed gentry. At some point in the book his biography is revealed, a life of reclusion, loneliness, and disappointment. Very Russian. Lavretsky returns a defeated man, for his wife has cheated on him in every corner, has taken lots of money from him, and disgraced him through half Europe. And everybody knows. After dismissing her, he travels to Italy, in order to get himself together, and he decides that his mission is Voltaire-like, to go back to Russia and "tender his own garden". He decides not to go back to the old estate where he had suffered so much, but to a smaller house where a wicked old aunt had died. Trying to recover some social links, he visits a distant relative, Maria Dimitrevna Kalitin, a widow with two young daughters. I won't spoil the rest, but what follows is a tale of mishap, love, suffering, unwelcome surprises. The epilogue is masterful, an ode to memory, to the passage of time, and to bodily-felt homesickness.

Traditional, serene, and making no concessions, this novel is part of the work that makes Turgenev deserve his place up above with Tolstoi and Dostoevsky, in his own style. Russian to the bone, but without paranoid delirium or epic ambitions, it is a perfect novel. I would like to read it again when I am old, sitting on a bench of a park, in autumn.
9 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Flippy
4.0 out of 5 stars A melancholic homecoming...
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2008
Verified Purchase
It is the archetypal story of the 'homecoming'. Turgenev captures the pathos and longing of returning. Where Tolstoy is the master of the epic, the great renouncer of sex and lust, Russia's prophet, Turgenev is the poet of landscapes, emotions, quiet moods and unfulfilled love. When you read Tolstoy, you can feel his brooding presence in the pages of his stories; with Turgenev, it is a bit more solemn, modest and melancholic. He is the wistful Russia, a thinker, a romantic. When the large tempos of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky overtake you, turn to Turgenev and appreciate his brief glimpses of beauty. First Love, On The Eve and A Month in the Country are also equally rewarding.
19 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
C. Wayne Swenson
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must for Turgenev Fans
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2012
Verified Purchase
If you enjoy Ivan Turgenev's storytelling, then this poignant novel is a must! One of Turgenev's more unsettling works, "Home of the Gentry" is a touching tale of life's harder side. The triumphs and travails of each character are described with poetic Turgenev flair. The mistakes and flaws of each character painfully haunt throughout this engrossing tale. I described this as one of Turgenev's more unsettling novels because of the endings to his life sketches for so many characters in the novel. Likewise, he wonderfully contrasts the difficulty of growing old, with the mistakes of your past front and center, against the yet unblemished grandeur of exuberant youth! He does it so well that I found it a bit personally unsettling. In short, this story powerfully resonates with the struggles of our own lives! A wonderful, feeling novel which I highly recommend. It is not, however, a classical fairy tale story! Nonetheless, it is arguably just as beautiful.
13 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Paul S. Jellinek
5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisite gem of a novel
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2009
Verified Purchase
An exquisite gem of a novel. Henry James was right in his praise for this book, and you can also see why Flaubert was such a fan--and how much he was influenced by Turgenev. I should add that the translation is exceptional, far better than many of the clunky translations that detract from other Russian novels I've read (including Turgenev's "Torrents of Spring" in the Barnes and Noble edition). I expect to come back to this one again and again.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars quite stupid.
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2017
Verified Purchase
Beside the point. All those questions you ask are geared to sell and are, pardon me, quite stupid.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
peter mcgarry
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favourite turGeneva novels
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2018
Verified Purchase
One of my favourite turGeneva novels. I read this thirty years ago and how wonderful the revisit has been.
Helpful
 Report
Joel D. Hirst
4.0 out of 5 stars One of the first marriages of Russia and Europe
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2020
At the beginning of the golden age of Russian literature, when Russia was emerging from poetry – as all developed literary societies must – and turning to glorious prose, there was Ivan Turgenev. Born into lower nobility, impoverished but still proud and clinging to the ancient ways like the old willow beside the stream which has run dry, leaves browning and weakened by too long a fight against the inevitable, Ivan Turgenev was one of the first powerful voices of change, announcing the new Russia, the Russia which was beginning its existential schizophrenic struggle over ‘east’ and ‘west’ (a struggle that continues into today). His work was probably the first to challenge the social issue of serfdom; in fact Bazarov from “Father and Sons” is considered the first Bolshevik in Russian literature. Educated in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Turgenev was actually a product of the west – a marriage of the new French style (he was good friends with Flaubert – who arguably laid the foundation upon which all modern novels are written – his novels flow with French language and German ideas) and a Russian’s sense of geography and place and the slowness of time in a world that does not change fast. In fact, Turgenev is as much a legacy of France as he is of Russia; did not even Macron recently praise Turgenev as a reminder to the world that Russia is ‘profoundly European’?

“Nest of the Gentry” is a simple love story – and in some ways feels almost like an autobiography. Though the story is about a petty-nobleman named Lavretsky, whose role in the story is falling in love and pursuing that love until he is in the end deceived and forced into a life of loveless sorrow (no spoiler here); I was more drawn to one of the minor characters, Lemm. A German composer who appears throughout the story, a luckless, lost and weary soul whose tortured path through life goes unnoticed. “Lemm’s appearance was not lovely to behold. He was short of stature and bent, with crooked shoulders and indrawn stomach, large flat feet and bluish-white nails on the stiff, horny fingers of his blue-veined red hands; he had a puckered face, hollow cheeks and tightened lips which he was forever twisting and gnawing at and which, added to his habitual taciturnity, produced an almost gruesome effect. His grey hair strayed in tufts over a low brow, his little immobile eyes smoldered like dying embers; he moved in a lumbering gait, swinging his unwieldy bulk forward at each step. Some of his gestures reminded one of the uncouth preening of a caged owl when it feels it is being observed and can but peer helplessly about with its enormous, timorously blinking and somnolent yellow eyes. A deep gnawing grief had laid its ineffaceable seal on the poor musician; it had marred and maimed his by no means engaging aspect; but to those who were not prone to be influenced by first impressions there was something good, and honest, something uncommon in this ravaged creature.” How can you not root for this figure; and even in doing so knowing that your efforts are in vain?

As I said, “Nest of the Gentry” might have been Ivan Turgenev’s attempt at an autobiography. The end of the novel is a bit of an epitaph taking place eight years after the story itself comes to an end; that is after Lavretsky has loved and lost and is coming to terms with that reality: “During these eight years he had at last turned the corner of his life, which many men pass without turning, but without which no one can wholly remain an honorable man: he had really ceased to think of his own happiness and self-interest. His spirit was quelled and – to be frank – he had grown old not only in face and body, he had grown old in heart; to keep a young heart in old age, as some people say, is difficult and almost absurd; he may well be content who has not lost his faith in goodness, tenacity of purpose and the will to act.”

And after all this, how does he face the coming night?

“For me, after this day, after these experiences, there remains but to take my last leave of you – and, in view of the approaching end and a God who waits, to say with sadness but without envy, without dark feelings: ‘Welcome, lone age! Burn out, useless life!’” Would that we all progressed so well along our own paths towards the end.
Helpful
 Report
Tom Bloom
5.0 out of 5 stars great service
Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2012
Verified Purchase
A very hard to find Turganev novel. Everyone should read him. One of the best Russian writers of all time
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Klaus Eichler
5.0 out of 5 stars Home of the gentry
Reviewed in Germany on December 2, 2022
Verified Purchase
Brilliante Novelle und "first class English" translation aus dem Russischen.
Report
wayne
5.0 out of 5 stars I cannot Criticize Any Russian Writer From The Nineteen Hundreds
Reviewed in Canada on January 1, 2018
Verified Purchase
Love those Russians.
Report
corgigirl
5.0 out of 5 stars Great if you like his work
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 17, 2018
Verified Purchase
Brand new book, as expected. Great if you like his work, which I do.
Report
Ian Shine
4.0 out of 5 stars Returning to the nest
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 5, 2008
Verified Purchase
An elegaic meditation on ageing, love and happiness, this has been called the most 'Turgenevian' of Turgenev's novels. It is set in the externally placid countryside, with the metropolises of Moscow and St Petersburg (and Paris) mentioned only as distant lands of troubles and bureaucracy.
The novel is mainly concerned with Lavretsky, who has returned to the countryside following his wife's unfaithfulness. She has gone to Paris, and he has now fled back to the country, as if he has been scalded by life and has now scarpered from it like a whimpering dog - or perhaps it is more like a bird returning after migration, as the Russian title 'The Nobility's Nest' suggests. While he fully expects to pass the remainder of his days in seclusion, he falls in love with Liza and the torments of love and unattainable happiness assail him once again, as it conspires that the two of them are unable to be together for the wheel of fate has spun them away from one another.
A Russian novel that if not epic in size, is certainly epic in its strength and beauty. It's concern with Russia's relationship with Europe is one that we can also find in War and Peace, and it's certainly no slander against Turgenev to say that this novel could easily find its place slipped within the pages of that epic masterpiece.
13 people found this helpful
 Report
Michael Jensen
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 17, 2017
Verified Purchase
good read
Report