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Books

Tolstoy’s favourite novel is a guide to being idle

A review of Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov, translated by Stephen Pearl. But like many apparent idlers, Oblomov isn’t really lazy – he just spends a lot of time in bed

18 October 2014

9:00 AM

18 October 2014

9:00 AM

Oblomov Ivan Goncharov (translated by Stephen Pearl)

Alma Classics, pp.582, £7.99, ISBN: 9781847493446

Oblomov, first published in 1859, is the charming tale of a lazy but lovable aristocrat in 19th-century Russia. The novel’s eponymous hero cannot see the point of doing anything at all, and spends his time lying in bed or wandering around his St Petersburg flat in his beloved oriental dressing gown, bickering about the dusting with his manservant.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £7.59 Tel: 08430 600033. Tom Hodgkinson is the editor of The Idler, which he established in 1993.

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