A Raw Youth

Also published as The Adolescent, this novel follows the life of 19-year-old intellectual Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate child of a controversial and womanizing landowner. The story follows the conflict of father and son, each representatives of the different cultural ideals of Russia in the 1840s and 1860s, respectively. Pitting Russian tradition against both nihilism and progressive Western European values, Arkady becomes entangled with socialist conspiracies, the quest for wealth, and a young widow with a mysterious letter.