It is a winter evening and Yegor Aduyev the scion of a wealthy family from the landed gentry
slips into the house of Baron Neilein with the intention of asking his beautiful daughter the
eighteen-year-old Yelena to be his wife. Will the besotted lover be successful in his pursuit
or will the young coquette - who seems at times to reciprocate his feelings but who lavished
lingering looks on two dashing princes during a recent ball - shatter his hopes his dreams and
his entire world? A Serendipitous Error an early novella of 1839 written when Goncharov was
still in his twenties is accompanied here by An Evil Malady. Taken together these two stories
- translated for the first time into English by Stephen Pearl - are further proof of the
eclectic narrative skills of the celebrated author of Oblomov.
