First Love

Ivan Turgenev's 1860 novella, "First Love" (Pervaya Lyubov), is a deeply personal and masterful exploration of youthful obsession, disillusionment, and the complex, often painful nature of adult passion.

The story is framed as a recollection told by the middle-aged Vladimir Petrovich as he vividly recounts the summer of his sixteenth year. During a holiday at his family's country dacha near Moscow, Vladimir becomes instantly and overwhelmingly infatuated with his new neighbor, the beautiful, enigmatic, and five-years-older Princess Zinaida Alexandrovna.