A masterpiece of Russian prose, Lermontov's only novel was influential for many later nineteenth-century authors, including Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. It features Pechorin who is a dangerous man, Byronic in his wasted gifts and his cynicism, and desperate for any kind of action that will stave off boredom. "Natasha Randall's English, in her new translation, has exactly the right degree of loose velocity. . . . (Nabokov's version, the best-known older translation, is a bit more demure than Randall's, less savage.)" —James Wood, London Review of Books 

"[A] smart, spirited new translation." —The Boston Globe 

"One of the most vivid and persuasive portraits of the male ego ever put down on paper." —Neil LaBute, from the Foreword