Obryv, known in English as The Precipice, is the last of Goncharov's three major novels. It follows Raisky, an artistic and dreamy man who returns to his family's provincial estate and becomes involved in the lives of his two young cousins and their grandmother. Around them stand a range of characters, including a restless sceptic with radical ideas.
The novel looks at love, duty, old morality and new ideas in mid-nineteenth-century Russia. It is rich in landscape and domestic detail, and it shows Goncharov's interest in how people shape, and are shaped by, the world they inherit. This edition is in Russian.