GajimaruClassics.
Eugene OneginAlexander Pushkin

On the coverDuel between Onegin and Lensky, Ilya Repin, 1899

Eugene Onegin

1833 · Russia · Novel in verse · ~230 pages

A bored, elegant St. Petersburg dandy carelessly rejects a shy country girl’s love and kills his best friend in a duel, then meets her again years later, transformed. Pushkin’s novel in verse, the fountainhead of Russian literature.

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Why read it

The book every later Russian writer grew out of, witty, melancholy, and impossibly elegant, with the luminous Tatyana at its heart. A love story told in some of the most perfect verse ever written.

Themes
SettingImperial Russia, 1820s

Aristocratic Russia in the 1820s, its idle young nobles fluent in French and bored with everything, its country estates dreaming, a whole restless generation looking for something to believe in.

About the author

Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), Russia’s national poet, wrote this sparkling novel entirely in intricate rhymed stanzas. He died in a duel much like the one he describes.