Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…

Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev

Constance Garnett was perhaps one of the most important Russian-to-English translators of the early 20th century, and she is renowned for translating canonical Russian male authors such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. Most of her early work, though, was spent translating Turgenev, and here we have his final novel, where the Russian countryside, its people and tragedies, come to life in what is referred to as his “tragic masterpiece.”

Also recommended: Peasants and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov. This sister NYRB Classics selection is also translated by Constance Garnett. The wintertime always seems to me the perfect time to read nineteenth-century Russian literature.