A Raw Youth

Arkady Dolgoruky is nineteen, illegitimate, humiliated by his birth, and obsessed with a single idea: amass a secret fortune and use it to become untouchable, answerable to no one. Thrown into the chaos of St. Petersburg and the orbit of the father who never claimed him, he acquires a letter that could ruin a woman he barely knows — and must decide whether to use it. Dostoyevsky's most underrated novel is a portrait of a young man inventing himself out of resentment and ambition, narrated with all the feverish, unreliable intimacy of someone still deciding who he wants to become. It is rawer and less polished than his most famous works, full of half-formed schemes, wounded pride, and the particular cruelty only a teenager convinced of his own genius can inflict. If you think you already know Dostoyevsky, this one will surprise you.