In its adventurous happenings – its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues – A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and 30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin – the archetypal Russian anti-hero – Lermontov’s novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature which it helped, in great measure, to make possible.