First Love

First published in 1860, 'First Love' is a novella by Ivan Turgenev, a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator, and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. Some criticized its light subject matter that did not touch upon any of the pressing social and political issues of the day. But it had its many admirers, including the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who gushed in a letter to Turgenev, "What an exciting girl that Zinochka is!"

It tells the love story...