Pushkin’s great novel in verse.

Eugene Onegin, bored with metropolitan society, inherits a country estate and falls into the orbit of the poet Lensky, the sisters Olga and Tatyana. Through this, he begins on a journey of irreversible errors.

Pushkin is truly a grand master of form. He can pivot from mockery to melancholy to gossip to philosophical aside almost without warning, so the novel feels both formally intricate and extremely alive. Beneath the manners and courtship plot is a book about timing, self-consciousness, boredom and being totally out of phase with your own life. 

This Penguin Classics edition uses Charles Johnston’s celebrated English verse translation, first published in 1977, with John Bayley’s introduction added in 1979. The translation preserves the novel’s stanzaic form and much of its wit.

Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1979 or later printing of the 1979 Penguin Classics edition. Paperback. Charles Johnston translation; introduction by John Bayley. Moderate shelf and handling wear, including rubbing, creasing and a small tear/chip at the upper corner of the front cover. Pages toned but clean; binding sound. Good condition.