A Hero of Our Time

“A Hero of Our Time” is the only completed novel by Mikhail Lermontov. It is a social-psychological drama in which the plot recedes into the background, giving all attention to the main character—unusual, often unpleasant, questionable, unclear, and lost in his own thoughts and feelings, and therefore confusing everyone else: Grigory Pechorin. Inspired by “Eugene Onegin,” Lermontov assembled “a portrait composed of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development.” A portrait that was supposed to expose society’s flaws—yet in the end it told the tragedy of a post-romantic hero: undoubtedly flawed, yet irresistibly captivating and, above all, truly real. The actor and director Alexey Agranovich longed to read this book aloud, and he became the voice of “A Hero of Our Time.” “If you admired fictions far more terrible and ugly, why would this character—even as fiction—find no mercy from you? Isn’t it because there is more truth in it than you would wish?..”.