The Adolescent

Among Dostoevsky{u2019}s later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts the story of nineteen-year-old Arkady {u2013} the illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov and the maid Sofia Andreyevna {u2013} as he struggles to find his place in society and 2become a Rothschild3 against the background of 1870s Russia, a nation still tethered to its old systems and values but shaken up by the new ideological currents of socialism and nihilism. Both a Bildungsroman and a novel of ideas, dealing with themes such as the relationship between fathers and sons and the role of money in modern society, The Adolescent {u2013} here presented in a brand-new translation by Dora O{u2019}Brien {u2013} shows Dostoevsky at his finest as a social commentator and observer of the workings of a young man{u2019}s mind.

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