First Love

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818–1883) was the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe. He witnessed the February Revolution in Paris (1848), and his subsequent connection with reform groups in Russia, along with his sympathetic 1852 eulogy of Nikolai Gogol (who satirized the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian empire), led to his arrest and one-month imprisonment in St. Petersburg. In 1879 the honorary degree of doctor of civil law was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.

Constance Garnett (1862–1946) translated the works of numerous Russian authors, including Tolstoy, Gogol, Pushkin, and Turgenev.

Edoardo Ballerini is a two-time winner of the Audio Publisher Association’s Best Male Narrator Award, a two-time winner of Society of Voice Arts Awards, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019.