7 h 25 minAudiobook6 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your wish to become a better person is tangled up with your hunger to be admired?
Sixteen-year-old Nikolai Irtenev prepares to enter Moscow University with plans for a new life. He sets himself rules, breaks them, and starts again. In Youth, Leo Tolstoy turns the struggle to grow up into a close portrait of a young man who cannot always separate goodness from vanity.
Nikolai's friend Dmitri Nekhlyudov urges honesty and moral improvement, while his brother Volodya offers a model of easy confidence. Between Moscow and the countryside, family ties, attraction, and the wish to shine in society test Nikolai's resolve. He wants to be good, successful, and loved—but those wishes do not always lead him in the same direction.
What you’ll discover
- The rules we break Follow Nikolai's earnest plans for change, and the impulses that keep pulling him away.
- A demanding friendship Meet Dmitri, whose strict honesty gives Nikolai a model he longs to follow.
- The hunger for admiration Watch the wish to seem refined compete with the harder work of becoming good.
- The ties of home Step between Moscow and the countryside, where household changes stir Nikolai's old feelings.
- A mind watching itself Recognize the uneasy moments when Nikolai catches vanity hiding inside his best intentions.
Is it for you?
This book suits readers who like close, honest portraits of an inner life, and anyone who remembers the gap between who they meant to be at eighteen and who they were. If you want fast plot, you may find it slow.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A boy resolves to remake himself
- Dmitri Nekhlyudov offers a harder honesty
- The pull of society and the wish to be admired
- Family, estate, and the ties of home
- Love, shame, and the failure of resolutions
- A mind that watches itself
Who’s who
- Nikolai IrtenevThe narrator, a sensitive young nobleman entering Moscow University, who longs to be good and admired and cannot always tell the two wishes apart.
- Dmitri NekhlyudovNikolai's close friend, serious and strict with himself, who urges honesty and moral improvement and becomes the model Nikolai wants to follow.
- VolodyaNikolai's older brother, already at home in the world, whose easy confidence gives Nikolai something to measure himself against.
- Nikolai's fatherA landowner of the old family whose decisions and moods shape the household and leave their mark on his son.
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Language: Deutsch
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
A boy resolves to remake himself
The story opens as Nikolai stands on the edge of adult life. He is sixteen, and he is preparing to enter the university in Moscow. His older brother Volodya is already a young man of the world, and Nikolai measures himself against him.
Nikolai is full of schemes. He imagines a new, orderly self who will work hard, think clearly, and master his passions. He writes down rules of life and lists of duties, and he believes that writing them is half the work.
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The author
Leo Tolstoy
1828–1910 · Russian novelist and moral philosopher
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian author born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, where he lived for much of his life. He wrote novels, stories, and essays. War and Peace appeared in 1865–1869 and Anna Karenina in 1875–1877. He died in 1910 at Astapovo, Russia.
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What is Youth by Tolstoy about?
It follows Nikolai Irtenev as he enters Moscow University and tries to become a better person. He makes rules, seeks friendship and status, and keeps failing his own standards, while learning to look at himself honestly.
Is Youth part of a trilogy?
Yes. It is the third book of Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy, after Childhood and Boyhood. Each book follows the same narrator, Nikolai Irtenev, at a later stage of growing up.
Is Youth a true story?
It is fiction based on Tolstoy's own early life. He drew on his memories, but changed events and characters. It was published in Russian in 1857.
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