First Love（初恋）

Vladimir Petrovich Voldemar, a 16-year-old, is staying in the country with his family and meets Zinaida Alexandrovna Zasyekina, a beautiful 21-year-old woman, staying with her mother, Princess Zasyekina, in a wing of the manor. This family, as with many of the Russian minor nobility with royal ties of that time, were only afforded a degree of respectability because of their titles; the Zasyekins, in the case of this story, are a very poor family. The young Vladimir falls irretrievably in love with Zinaida, who has a set of several other (socially more eligible) suitors whom he joins in their difficult and often fruitless search for the young lady's favour.

First Love is a novella by Ivan Turgenev, first published in 1860. It is one of his most popular pieces of short fiction. It tells the love story between a 21-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy, but things change when the girl falls in love with the boy's father.

This is a public domain book converted by anonymous volunteers and you may find it for free on the web.This work is respectfully inscribed by the author.

伊凡・谢尔盖耶维奇・屠格涅夫（1818-1883）是俄罗斯杰出的现实主义作家。他创作的《罗亭》、《贵族之家》、《前夜》、《父与子》、《烟》、《处女地》等六部长篇小说，被誉为俄国十九世纪四十年代七十年代“社会思想的艺术编年史”。与此同时，他还写过数十篇中短篇小说，《初恋》正是其中的代表作。