On the Eve by Ivan Turgenev (1860). Turgenev’s ur-themes of authenticity and humanism are highlighted in this tragic love story in which Elena Stahov, the novel’s passionate and do-gooding heroine, falls in love not with the suitor her father has picked for her, but with Dimitry Insarov, a Bulgarian revolutionary who blazes like a flame against the feckless upper-middle-class Russians that make up Elena’s other suitors.
Total Points: 5 (ES 5)