The Diary of a Superfluous Man


The Diary of a Superfluous Man is an 1850 novella by the Russian author Ivan Turgenev. It is written in the first person in the form of a diary by a man who has a few days left to live as he recounts incidents of his life. The story has become the archetype for the Russian literary concept of the superfluous man. It was first published in 1850 in Otechestvennye Zapiski.