Goncharov was the leading Russian writer of the 1850s, and, as the author of The Same Old Story, was regarded as "the real heir to Nikolai Gogol". But the publication of Turgenev's first full-length novel. A Nest of the Gentry, in 1859, at around the same time as Goncharov's Oblomov, which had been more than ten years in the making, suddenly changed the public's perception. Turgenev's success was eyed with suspicion by his rival, who started lo believe...