My Childhood(1913)

Gorky's prose, like his drama, is striking in its "base" content and honest narrative of life's hardships. Like Leo Tolstoy, the writer wrote his own autobiographical trilogy. Its first part, ‘Childhood’, is an incredibly vivid and colorful account of a boy's life and coming of age in Nizhny Novgorod, filled with maternal love, his grandfather's beatings and the "school of life" of the streets. It depicts provincial Russian life with an incredible atmosphere.

The work is often compared to the works of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, whose characters were also raised and forged by the streets.

Translated by Isidor Schneider, Publisher Garden City publishing co, 1926