The stories that make up the famous trilogy were written by Leo Tolstoy in 1852–1856 and first published in the journal “Sovremennik.” The plan of the young prose writer (in the year he wrote “Childhood,” the enlisted young Tolstoy was twenty-four) included another work—“Youth,” but he never wrote this novella…
In his trilogy, the author meticulously explores the inner world of a young person: first as a child, then as a teenager, and later as a young man. The writer tries to understand the laws by which consciousness is formed. In the characters he creates, a person’s inner life is revealed—a complex, contradictory process usually hidden from the eyes of outsiders. The novellas are autobiographical: in the story of Nikolеньka Irtenyev, the author experiences and analyzes his own life, seeking answers to the questions that matter to each of us: what must one become? What should one strive for?