A Hero of Our Time

The first major prose novel in Russian literature and chief source of the Russian tradition in 19th century literature, A Hero of Our Time (1840) was to have a profound influence on later Russian writers. Its use of a non-chronological and multifaceted narrative structure influenced such later Russian authors as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy and presaged the antiheroes and antinovels of 20th-century fiction.