My Neighbour Radilov by Ivan Turgenev. Short summary

5 seconds

The hunter was invited to dinner at a neighbor’s house. There he encountered a love collision: Radilov and his late wife’s sister are in love with each other, but struggle with the feeling because of duty.

1 minute

The author was hunting on the land of a neighboring landowner. The landlord invited him to dinner. In the manor lived Radilov himself, his aged mother, the decrepit ruined landowner, who was kept out of favor, and Olga, the sister of the landlord’s dead wife. She was not a very pretty girl, but she had expressive features and intelligent eyes.

After dinner, Radilov and the author got to talking. The landowner confessed that he loved his wife very much and still suffers for her. He told how he had looked into the face of his deceased wife, and when he noticed a fly crawling over her eye, he burst into tears. Upon hearing this, Olga hurriedly left the room.

Some time later the author paid Radilov another visit. But it turned out that the landlord had run off with Olga in an unknown direction. Only now did the author realize that Olga had left the room out of jealousy. He tried to ask the old mother about her son, but she only cried.