Also translated as A Quiet Backwater, this 1854 novella is set in the Russian countryside and portrays a “lull” (the literal meaning of «Затишье») in the lives of its characters. A young absentee landowner makes his annual visit to his estate and is invited by a neighbor, leading him to meet two contrasting young women. One is Marya, a wild, free-spirited beauty of the steppe, and the other is Nadezhda, a sharp-tongued, independent “mocking Amazon”. The landowner also observes the women’s brother, an indolent fellow, representing the stagnation of the gentry. Calm unfolds in a subdued, observational tone, reading “like the start of a novel” about provincial life. Turgenev does not force a dramatic plot here; instead, the piece captures the atmosphere of a quiet provincial summer and the undercurrents of change stirring beneath the surface.This critical reader's edition presents a modern translation of the original manuscript, crafted to help the reader engage directly with Turgenev's works through clean, contemporary language and simplified sentence structures that clarify his complex ideas. Supplementary material enriches the text with autobiographical, historical, and linguistic context, including an afterword on Turgenev’s history, impact, and intellectual legacy highlighting the personal relationships that shaped his philosophy (focusing on Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol), an index of the philosophical concepts he employs (emphasizing Realism and Nihilism) a comprehensive chronological list of his published writings, a brief biography, and a detailed timeline of his life.
