Rudin was the first of Turgenev’s novels, but already in this work the topic of the superfluous man and his inability to act (which became a major theme of Turgenev’s literary work) was explored. Similarly to other Turgenev’s novels, the main conflict in Rudin was centred on a love story of the main character and a young, but intellectual and self-conscious woman who is contrasted with the main hero (this type of female character became known in literary criticism as «тургеневская девушка», “Turgenev maid”).
A loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, set in the Russian countryside, the story concerns the disrespectful treatment the protagonist, Kharlov, receives from his ungrateful daughters and the revenge he eventually wreaks upon them.
