What Is To Be Done?: Tales Of New People
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Overall good jacket. Page Condition: Good with some yellowing. Markings: previous owner
Written within the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress while its author awaited sentencing, What Is to Be Done? stands as one of the most politically electrifying novels of the nineteenth century — a work so incendiary that it inspired generations of Russian revolutionaries, including Lenin himself. Chernyshevsky chronicles the lives of a new breed of rational, self-reliant individuals — most memorably the fiercely independent Vera Pavlovna — as they forge cooperative workshops, liberated marriages, and utopian dreams against the suffocating backdrop of Tsarist Russia. The novel unfolds with didactic urgency, blending social argument with romantic drama, presenting a blueprint for a society restructured around reason, equality, and the emancipation of women. Beyond its narrative, the work argues that human nature is fundamentally shaped by environment and self-interest rightly understood — a philosophy of rational egoism that struck at the very foundations of the old order. Chernyshevsky's prose is deliberately provocative, addressing the reader directly and dismantling literary convention with the confidence of a man who knew his words would outlast his chains. Translated here by Laura Baraha, this edition brings the full force of that revolutionary vision to the English-speaking world — leaving the reader to wonder just how much of that vision remains unfinished.
Author: Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Format: Hardback
Published: 1983, Raduga Publishers
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - no tears. Overall good jacket. Page Condition: Good with some yellowing. Markings: previous owner
Written within the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress while its author awaited sentencing, What Is to Be Done? stands as one of the most politically electrifying novels of the nineteenth century — a work so incendiary that it inspired generations of Russian revolutionaries, including Lenin himself. Chernyshevsky chronicles the lives of a new breed of rational, self-reliant individuals — most memorably the fiercely independent Vera Pavlovna — as they forge cooperative workshops, liberated marriages, and utopian dreams against the suffocating backdrop of Tsarist Russia. The novel unfolds with didactic urgency, blending social argument with romantic drama, presenting a blueprint for a society restructured around reason, equality, and the emancipation of women. Beyond its narrative, the work argues that human nature is fundamentally shaped by environment and self-interest rightly understood — a philosophy of rational egoism that struck at the very foundations of the old order. Chernyshevsky's prose is deliberately provocative, addressing the reader directly and dismantling literary convention with the confidence of a man who knew his words would outlast his chains. Translated here by Laura Baraha, this edition brings the full force of that revolutionary vision to the English-speaking world — leaving the reader to wonder just how much of that vision remains unfinished.