Mikhail Lermontov's “A Hero of Our Time” contains five stories. They are “Bela,” “Maksim Maksimych,” “Taman,” “Princess Mary,” and “The Fatalist,” all linked by the enigmatic officer Grigory Pechorin.
The book is often described as a novel made from connected novellas rather than as a single continuous narrative. Its unusual structure reveals Pechorin gradually from different perspectives. First, an unnamed traveler hears about him from the veteran Maksim Maksimych; later, Pechorin's own journal entries provide direct access to his thoughts, relationships, boredom, ambition, and destructive self-awareness.
The stories are deliberately arranged out of chronological order. “Taman,” “Princess Mary,” and “The Fatalist” occur earlier in Pechorin's life than “Bela” and “Maksim Maksimych,” even though they appear later in the book. This arrangement creates a psychological portrait before the term became central to modern fiction. The separate authorial preface, added for the second edition, is not an additional story, which explains why some readers may miscount the book's components.