No doubt Turgenev was one of the most liberal-spirited and unbelievably humane among all the great nineteenth-century Russian writers, and in "Virgin Soil", the biggest and most ambitious of all his works, he tried to balance his deep affection for his country and his people with his growing apprehensions about what their future. The book tells the story of a young man and a young woman, torn between love and politics, who struggle to make headway against the self-satisfaction of the powerful, the speechless misery of the powerless, and the stuffy conventions of provincial life. The book is reach for storylines and events. At once this is a love story, a devastating, and bitterly funny, social satire, and, perhaps most movingly of all, a heartfelt celebration of the endless beauty of the Russian countryside. This is a tragic masterpiece of world’s classic literature in which the author encounters the enduring question of the place of happiness in a political world.