A series of stories that made Turgenev famous and taught Russian literature to talk about the peasantry without falsehood and simplification. Features The author of the introductory article is Kirill Zubkov. The position of the hunter in Turgenev’s book is exceptional: he is the only educated person in the Western sense who easily gets along in the Russian province . Other people who understand, for example, German philosophy (this was a kind of calling card of Moscow students, including the young Turgenev), have no place in the Russian outback. This idea is most consistently carried out in “Hamlet of Shchigrovsky District” - the main character of this story absolutely ruthlessly proves that an excellent education not only does not help him, but also makes him a completely superfluous person in life. About the series “The Main Books of Russian Literature” - a joint series publishing house "Alpina" Prose" and the Internet project "Shelf". The works that appear in it are selected by modern writers, critics, literary scholars, and teachers. This is both an attempt to determine what the Russian literary canon looks like today, and a new look at famous works: each book is accompanied by a foreword by the authors of “The Shelf.”