Boyhood

Childhood, Boyhood, Youth by Leo Tolstoy: Themes of Shyness and Self-Improvement. Leo Tolstoy began Childhood, Boyhood, Youth – a trilogy – in his early twenties. It is a vibrant account of a young person's emerging awareness of the world, himself, and the people around him, as described through the eyes of Nikolenka. Evident too in its brilliant account of a young person's emerging awareness of the world and of his place within it are many of the stances, techniques and themes that would come to full flower in the immortal War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and in the other great works of Tolstoy's maturity.