A Hero of Our Time

<p><b>''I remain in unchanged admiration for this bold, headstrong, carefree undertaking, a first novel published when the author was twenty-five, which proved to be the first prose masterpiece in Russian'' </b><b>Julian Barnes from his preface.</b><br><br>Published in Russian in April 1840, <i>A Hero of Our Time</i> reached English in 1853, under the title ''<i>Sketches of Life in the Caucasus, by a Russe.'' </i>Full of towering landscapes and local colour, it can be read as the travelogue of a poet and serving officer, but also as a portrait of the romantic as self-destructive anti-hero.<br><br>Vladimir Nabokov''s translation of<i> A Hero of Our Time</i> was published in the United States in 1958, the same year as<i> Lolita: </i>world fame was about to overtake this committed Russian living in America.</p>