How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev The Diary of a Superfluous Man is an 1850 novella by Russian author Ivan Turgenev. It is written in the first person in the form of a diary by a man who has a few days left to live as he recounts incidents of his life. The story has become the archetype for the Russian literary concept of the superfluous man. Plot Summary: The doctor has just left me. At last I have got at something definite! For all his cunning, he had to speak out at last. Yes, I am soon, very soon, to die. The frozen rivers will break up, and with the last snow I shall, most likely, swim away whither? God knows! To the ocean too. Well, well, since one must die, one may as well die in the spring. But isn't it absurd to begin a diary a fortnight, perhaps, before death? What does it matter? And by how much are fourteen days less than fourteen years, fourteen centuries? Beside eternity, they say, all is nothingness--yes, but in that case eternity, too, is nothing. I see I am letting myself drop into metaphysics; that's a bad sign--am I not rather faint-hearted, perchance? I had better begin a description of some sort. It's damp and windy out of doors.