The Fishermen is a story of life among the peasants of northern Tula, where the broad Oka River flows through a level country to empty into the Volga at Nizhni Novgorod. These peasants get their living by fishing. Grigorovich, like most Russian writers, concerns himself with types of character.

Grigorovich was doubly an artist. His training as a painter and as the historian of art served him well in depicting the river landscape in every aspect. The landscape is described in all the varying seasons of the year. Many of the word pictures are veritable poems. Village life is also described with humor and realism. This is especially notable when some of the peasants visit the annual market, where episodes of traffic and of drunkenness occur. (wikipedia.org)