Childhood. In People. My Universities

The autobiographical trilogy by Maxim Gorky "Childhood. In People. My Universities", which he worked on for 10 years, is one of the most significant works of Russian realistic literature of the 20th century. The writer himself referred to it as "that truth that must be known to the root, in order to tear it out from memory, from the soul of man, from our entire life, heavy and shameful". Before the reader of the trilogy, provincial Russia at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century literally comes to life, with its merchant courtyards and working-class suburbs, Volga ports, a series of colorful characters, and the endless depth of understanding of the very soul of the Russian people, eternally balancing on the edge between the beautiful and the grotesque, between crime and holiness.