Fathers and Sons: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Fathers and Sons, credited to Ivan Turgenev, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev. Read by Roger Melin. The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov has been referred to as the "first Bolshevik", for his nihilism and rejection of the old order. Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s/1840s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the "sons") and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the conservative Slavophiles, who believed that Russia's path lay in its traditional spirituality. Fathers and Sons might be regarded as the first wholly modern novel in Russian Literature (Gogol's Dead Souls, another main contender, is sometimes referred to as a poem or epic in prose as in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy). The novel introduces a dual character study, as seen with the gradual breakdown of Bazarov's and Arkady's nihilistic opposition to emotional display, especially in the case of Bazarov's love for Madame Odintsova and Fenichka. This prominent theme of character duality and deep psychological insight would exert an influence on most of the great Russian novels to come, most obviously echoed in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The novel is also the first Russian work to gain prominence in the Western world, eventually gaining the approval of well established novelists Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry James, proving that Russian literature owes much to Ivan Turgenev. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Fathers and Sons
• Author credits: Ivan Turgenev
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 28
• Listed recording duration: 9:15:23

Catalogue topics

• turgenev
• fathers
• sons
• children
• Russia
• bolshevik
• bolshevism
• nihilism

Opening tracks: first 24 of 28

1. 01 - Chapter 1 — 9:50
2. 02 - Chapter 2 — 5:08
3. 03 - Chapter 3 — 14:41
4. 04 - Chapter 4 — 11:35
5. 05 - Chapter 5 — 16:17
6. 06 - Chapter 6 — 8:06
7. 07 - Chapter 7 — 16:54
8. 08 - Chapter 8 — 18:53
9. 09 - Chapter 9 — 8:06
10. 10 - Chapter 10 — 32:33
11. 11 - Chapter 11 — 10:53
12. 12 - Chapter 12 — 13:40
13. 13 - Chapter 13 — 16:03
14. 14 - Chapter 14 — 12:45
15. 15 - Chapter 15 — 11:57
16. 16 - Chapter 16 — 26:52
17. 17 - Chapter 17 — 29:39
18. 18 - Chapter 18 — 13:19
19. 19 - Chapter 19 — 19:34
20. 20 - Chapter 20 — 29:22
21. 21 - Chapter 21 — 43:45
22. 22 - Chapter 22 — 15:16
23. 23 - Chapter 23 — 18:02
24. 24 - Chapter 24 — 45:01

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.