'A few paces from me on a lawn flanked by green rasperry canes stood a tall, slender girl in a striped pink dress with a white kerchief on her head. Four young men clustered round her, and she was tapping them one by one on the forehead with those small grey flowers.'

At the end of a dinner party, the remaining guests drink wine and tell stories of their first love. For Vladimir Petrovich it will be a dark journey into his past, reawakening unbearable memories of his obsession with the beautiful Zinaida; and the cruelty and betrayal that followed. (c) Penguin Books

In 1970 Maximilian Schell directed and starred in a version of Ivan Turgenev`s novella. Former leading-actor John Moulder-Brown reads the love story for publisher NoaNoa.