Reading Groups

Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Children with Mike Levine

Clear

3 sessions Tuesdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT December 2 to December 16, 2025

The Center for Fiction

The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at an additional 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
12/2, 12/9, 12/16
In Person at The Center for Fiction

Turgenev’s masterpiece was published in 1862, the year after Tsar Alexander II emancipated Russia’s serfs. That it was immediately attacked by both progressives and conservatives was a testament to the depth of Turgenev’s insights. His intention was not to evaluate either ideology, but to show how neither could fully accommodate the complexity of lived experience. The novel’s two main characters, Arkady and Bazarov, are university students who’ve come home to the countryside from cosmopolitan St. Petersburg to visit their families. Arkady is enchanted by Bazarov, a charismatic nihilist who values nothing other than scientifically proven laws and who delights in provocation.

Turgenev created a searing portrait of the political strife roiling Russia at the time, but he was no less a brilliant observer of familial and romantic love. The novel has endured because, as much as the ideas of the characters, it’s about their unruly passions, which, try as they might, they cannot escape. As Gary Shteyngart wrote of Fathers and Children, which he named as his favorite novel, “when you finish reading it, you feel a little shaken and a little stirred.”

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Chapters 1-12 of Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev

What to expect from this reading group: Participants can expect a conversation prompted by questions from the instructor. They will be encouraged to form their own interpretations. The collective goal will be a deeper understanding of the book.

Reading List:

Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev

Led by

Mike Levine

Mike Levine

Mike Levine is an independent editor. He was previously an acquisitions editor at Northwestern University Press. Among the authors he published were Jen Beagin (Whiting Award winner), A. E. Stallings (National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, finalist), and Stephen Karam (Pulitzer Prize in Drama, finalist). He has also been a senior editor at the Great Books Foundation. Since 2000, he has taught literature and film seminars in several continuing education programs. He has a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in English from Rice University.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

Groups+Workshops

More Groups+Workshops

Groups+Workshops