A Hero of Our Time
Albert Camus' novel "The Fall" begins with an excerpt from Lermontov's foreword to "A Hero of Our Time": "Some were dreadfully insulted, and quite seriously, to have held up as a model such an immoral character as "A Hero of Our Time"; others shrewdly noticed that the author had portrayed himself and his acquaintances. "A Hero of Our Time", gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual; it is the aggregate of the vices of our whole generation in their fullest expression."