‘Childhood’, Tolstoy’s first published work in 1852, is also the first novel in Leo Tolstoy’s autobiographical trilogy, which also includes ‘Boyhood, ‘ and ‘Youth.’ Published when Tolstoy was twenty-three, the book gained immediate notice among Russian writers including Ivan Turgenev, and heralded the young Tolstoy as a major figure in Russian letters. ‘Childhood’ is an expressionist exploration of the internal life of a young boy, Nikolenka, and was a new form in Russian writing, mixing fact, fiction and emotions to render the moods and reactions of the narrator.
Themes of shyness, self-image and self-improvement permeate the book, yet we are also exposed to a young Tolstoy’s wider descriptions of nature, art and the workings of the world.
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