The Adolescent

The last novel Fyodor Dostoevsky published before The Brothers Karamazov, The Adolescent has been overshadowed by the great writer’s other works. Yet this pivotal novel contains some of Dostoevsky’s most groundbreaking experiments with literary form—and some of his most provocative explorations of desire, sexuality, and capitalism.

In 1870s St. Petersburg, a young man named Arkady Dolgoruky strives to understand his origins. The illegitimate son of a nobleman and a peasant woman, he is caught between an enigmatic biological father, who is intellectually compelling but morally suspect, and a legal father, a peasant who has become an ascetic wanderer. As Arkady seeks to make sense of his unconventional family, he tries out several paths in life: amassing wealth, aristocratic debauchery, and a quest for spiritual truth. Along the way, he becomes embroiled in conspiracy and plans to blackmail a beautiful widow.

The Adolescent is Dostoevsky’s most extended work of first-person narration, told entirely by Arkady. His voice is one of the writer’s supreme achievements: a callow young man who combines overconfidence and uncertainty, impulsiveness and hesitation. Susanne Fusso’s translation introduces readers to a late masterpiece of one of the world’s greatest novelists.