My Childhood (Pocket Penguins) - Softcover

Gorky, Maxim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241261953 ISBN 13: 9780241261958

Publisher: Penguin Classic, 2016

Synopsis

'I could hear the frost crackling outside. Greenish moonbeams shone through windows covered with patterns of ice...' One of the most moving accounts of being a boy ever written, My Childhood is a both wonderful and harrowing memoir - and one of the great works of Russian literature. A new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers.

About this title

About the Author

Maxim Gorky was born in 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod. After a grim childhood and some years of wandering he began to write stories and by his thirties had become famous both for fiction and plays. He became involved in revolutionary activity against the tsarist regime in Russia and had a confused, difficult relationship with the Soviet dictatorship, partly living abroad and yet becoming the USSR's most feted and widely read author. He died in 1936 under suspicious circumstances and Stalin and Molotov were among the bearers of his coffin.

Review

The first book of an autobiographical trilogy by Maksim Gorky, published in Russian in 1913-14 as Detstvo. It was also translated into English as Childhood. Like the volumes of autobiography that were to follow, My Childhood examines the author's experiences by means of individual portraits and descriptions of events. He reveals that his mother was mostly absent after the death of his father and that his upbringing was in the hands of his brutal grandfather. He also creates a compelling portrait of his unlearned but loving grandmother. Leaving home at age 12, the young Gorky learns self-reliance and begins to educate himself by reading. The subsequent autobiographical volumes are V lyudyakh (1915-16; In the World; also published as My Apprenticeship) and Moi universitety (1923; My Universities; also published as My University Days). Considered to constitute one of the finest Russian autobiographies, the books reveal Gorky to be an acute observer with great descriptive powers. --Various

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classic
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0241261953
• ISBN 13: 9780241261958
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272