Coming back to the "nest" of his family home in Russia after years of fruitless endeavours away from his roots, Lavretsky decides to turn his back on the vacuous salons of Paris and his frivolous and unfaithful wife Varvara Pavlovna. On his return he meets Liza, the daughter of one of his cousins, whom he had known when they were children and who rekindles in him long-smothered feelings of love. News of Varvara's death arrive from France, offering Lavretsky the prospect of a new life, but a cruel twist threatens to shatter his dreams and forces him to re-evaluate his plans.

Hailed as a masterpiece of Russian literature, A Nest of the Gentry, Turgenev's most successful and widely read novel – here presented in a new translation by Michael Pursglove – deals with the personal struggles of the individual in a period of turbulent social change.