7 h 25 minAudiobook8 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.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy coming-of-age stories, sharp portraits of vanity and friendship, and a narrator who laughs at his own younger self while still loving him.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A spring morning sparks a vow to improve
- Dreams and rules are easier than deeds
- Holy feelings fade on the road home
- Entrance examinations test his pride
- Grown-up clothes do not make a grown-up
- Calls, first loves and a family of ideals
- A summer of music, novels and comme il faut
- A father welcomes his grown-up sons
- Family talk and the wish to seem clever
Who’s who
- Nicola IrtenieffThe narrator, a sixteen-year-old who wants to become a better and admired man but keeps tripping over his own vanity.
- Dimitri NechludoffNicola's serious, kind and moody friend, who values frankness, moral effort and an unusual friendship with Lubov Sergievna.
- WolodaNicola's older brother, a self-assured young man who dislikes showing affection and wants to be seen as grown-up and fashionable.
- PapaA cheerful, charming father who loves cards and pretty women and who surprises his sons by planning a second marriage.
- VarenikaDimitri's sensible sister, quiet and honest, whose calm judgment Nicola slowly learns to respect.
- Sophia IvanovnaDimitri's kind aunt, whose practical love for everyone around her is the model of loving that the narrator praises.
- ZuchinA clever, poor, fun-loving student who leads a lively group of comrades and shows Nicola a different way to live.
- Avdotia EpifanovThe beautiful young woman who becomes Papa's second wife and tries to prove her devotion by sacrifices that annoy him.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 7 h 25 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 8 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Youth
by Leo Tolstoy · 1857
Nicola writes rules for a new life, but his pen leaves smudges across the page.
Challenging5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What if one bright morning made you swear to become a better person, and then you sat on a windowsill and did nothing? That is how Youth begins.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A spring morning sparks a vow to improve
Nicola Irtenieff, nearly sixteen, has learned from his friend Dimitri Nechludoff that a person can strive to become better. For a while the idea only pleases his mind. Then one April day it strikes him with the force of a revelation, and he dates the start of his youth from that moment.
He is stuck on an algebra problem in the schoolroom, covered in chalk and in a foul mood. Remembering that he must go to confession, he suddenly offers to help the servant, who is also named Nicola, carry a window frame to the lumber room. Then he sits on the sill and watches melting streams, swelling lilac buds and chirping sparrows. They tell him that beauty, happiness and virtue are one, and easy to reach.
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What is Youth by Tolstoy about?
It follows Nicola Irtenieff from nearly sixteen into his first university year. He tries to become good, learns about friendship, love, money and fashion, and often undercuts himself with vanity.
Is Youth a true story?
Nicola tells the story as a recollection of his younger self. The story alone does not tell us which experiences belong to Tolstoy's own life.
What does comme il faut mean in the book?
It is a French phrase meaning proper or fashionable. Nicola uses it to rank people by their French, boots and fingernails, and the narrator later calls it a deceptive idea that cost him much time.
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.
More by Leo Tolstoy
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