In its adventurous happeningsāits abductions, duels, and sexual intriguesāA Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and ā30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorināthe archetypal Russian antiheroāLermontovās novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible. This edition includes a Translatorās Foreword by Vladimir Nabokov, who translated the novel in collaboration with his son, Dmitri Nabokov.