First Love

A boy on the edge of a summer, a neighbour's daughter, a father who is not only a father. Turgenev's First Love, unabridged English: infatuation as education, jealousy, a duel's shadow. Zinaida is older, brighter, and not a lesson until it is too late. Hear the first knowledge that desire is not innocent. The duel is offstage; the education is not. Russia, youth, a wound that stays polite. A novella of a plot the boy was not invited to read, spoken as it arrives.