Set at the time of the 1905 Revolution and centering on episodes in the lives of two peasant brothers – “characters sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human” – it reveals the pettiness, violence and ignorance of life on the land. At once nostalgic for a bygone more innocent age and foreshadowing the turbulences of the twentieth century, Bunin’s narrative is a triumph of bitter realism, shot through with the author’s classical style and precision of language.