Set during the 1905 Revolution in southwest Russia, this is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of the lives of two peasant brothers, "characters sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human." With brutal honesty it reveals the pettiness, violence, and ignorance of rural farm life. At once nostalgic for a bygone, more innocent age and foreshadowing the turbulences of the 20th century, this wrenching novel is a triumph of bitter realism.