Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

The beautiful Natalya is married to Arkadi, a rich but older landowner. Bored with her life, she catches the eye of the handsome Mikhail. Might this flirtation develop into something more? Not once the young, attractive Aleksei arrives as tutor to Natalya's son. Natalya falls for Aleksei, but so does her teenage step-daughter Vera. Suddenly Natalia's seemingly idyllic life has turned into a complex web of unrequited love, guilt, lust and jealousy....

When Arkady Petrovich returns home from college, his father finds his naive son fallen under the powerful influence of the ardent young Bazarov, a self-proclaimed nihilist.

"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...