Read by Sebastian Thewes - unabridged - 6.7 hours - 45 Chapters
Written in 1870-71, the Russian Classic, Spring Torrents, like all Turgenev's writings, has echoes of his own life. It is set in the summer of 1840, when Turgenev was twenty-two. One of the most perfect of all his works, he shares intimate emotions and insight into human nature as he reminisces about what began as a simple love story, but became complicated by a contrasting encounter.
This unabridged audiobook is of Leonard Schapiro's translation, and is read by his stepson Sebastian Thewes. This production by Tim Lane includes occasional foley sound and excerpts from a performance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition by Menachem Rozin
Leonard Schapiro was a distinguished academic and scholar of Russian politics. His most famous book, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, remains the standard work on the subject.
He was an expert on the work of Turgenev, publishing this translation in 1972 with Eyre Methuen and in 1980 with Penguin. It is worth getting the book in order to read his Critical Essay concerning Spring Torrents – the Penguin edition is easily available. In 1978 he published Turgenev: His Life and Times.
His last book, The Russian Revolutions of 1917, he dedicated to the children of his stepson, Sebastian Thewes: “For Robert, James, Arabella and Jemima. In the hope that their generation will never be duped by promises of utopia”. Jemima Thewes is married to Tim Lane.
Professor Schapiro died in 1983.
credits
released May 19, 2017
Written by Ivan Turgenev
Translated by Leonard Schapiro
Read by Sebastian Thewes
Produced by Tim Lane
Cover photograph by Jemima Thewes
