Boyhood

Boyhood (1854) is a novel by Leo Tolstoy. Published at the beginning of his career as a leading Russian author of his generation, Boyhood is the second in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels tracing Nikolenka’s journey from innocence to experience. As a record of the past, a nostalgic reminder of a lost world, Boyhood is one of Tolstoy’s most personal works, and yet his prose shows signs of the universal religious and philosophical themes that would inspire such masterpieces as War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). A story of life and death, love and grief, Boyhood is an invaluable treasure of Russian literature. “No longer were my eyes confronted with the closed door of Mamma’s room (which I had never been able to pass without a pang), nor with the covered piano (which nobody opened now, and at which I could never look without trembling), nor with mourning dresses (we had each of us on our ordinary travelling clothes), nor with all those other objects which recalled to me so vividly our irreparable loss, and forced me to abstain from any manifestation of merriment lest I should unwittingly offend against her memory.” Following the death of his beloved mother, Nikolenka is forced to adjust to a world grown unbearably cold. As though the grief were not enough, he must also overcome his own feelings of loneliness and uncertainty, as well as his hatred of his new French tutor. As his story unfolds, we see him experience love, grief, and anger for the first time in his life, returning us for a brief moment to our own childhoods, the bittersweet memories of good and bad things that can never return. Praised for its expressionistic style and meditative prose, Boyhood won Tolstoy the attention of Russia’s literary elite, launching his career as one of the nineteenth century’s most influential artists.

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