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Audiobook edition · 7 h 25 minPaperback · 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
Readers who love candid coming-of-age stories, vivid portraits of friends and families, and the humor of youthful mistakes will enjoy this book. It also suits those drawn to Russian student life.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A fresh start becomes a daydream
- Pride follows sincere repentance
- Borrowed adulthood leaves Nicola exposed
- Wanting approval leads to false display
- Family closeness becomes a polite performance
- Status gets in friendship's way
- Good breeding becomes a destructive measure
- Care matters more than grand declarations
- Vanity hides the people worth knowing
Who’s who
- Nicola IrtenieffThe narrator, a Moscow student who wants to be good, brilliant, and admired all at once, and often fails at each.
- Dimitri NechludoffNicola's friend, who is stern with himself, devoted to moral growth, and loyal to the plain Lubov Sergievna.
- WolodaNicola's older brother, a cool young man of the world who hides his feelings and loves cards and balls.
- PapaThe charming, teasing father who gambles, falls in love easily, and marries the beautiful Avdotia Epifanov.
- DubkoffA witty, polished friend of Woloda who loves cards, jokes, and parties, and whom Nicola unfairly insults.
- VarenikaDimitri's quiet, sensible sister, who speaks plainly and sees through her family's friends more than Nicola expects.
- Sophia IvanovnaDimitri's kind, stout aunt, who gives practical love to everyone around her and asks for nothing in return.
- ZuchinA clever, rough-edged student leader who studies and drinks hard and draws Nicola toward his warm circle.
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Youth in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Youth
by Leo Tolstoy · 1857
Nicola, nearly sixteen, swears to become a new man this very minute, but cannot even rule a straight line.
Challenging2–5 hours to read16 languages
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“I have spoken first of the ethical works of Tolstoy, because they are of the first importance to me, but I think that his aesthetical works are as perfect.”
In short
Picture a boy of nearly sixteen on a windowsill on a spring morning, an algebra book at his side. He decides that from this very minute he will become a different person.
Youth at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 5 min3 h 15 min fast, 4 h 50 min slow
- Length
- 58,100 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1857by Leo Tolstoy
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A spring morning turns a boy toward goodness
Nicola dates the start of his youth from one sudden moment. A belief he shares with his friend Dimitri, that a person can steadily improve, becomes a call to act. He is nearly sixteen, and he dislikes his plain face and large hands.
Then comes an April morning near Easter. Nicola is stuck on an algebra problem, cross, with chalk on his jacket. He remembers that he must go to confession that day, and at once he turns cheerful. Spring pours in through the open window, and he feels that beauty, happiness and virtue are one thing. He cries out that he will be someone else from this minute, then goes on sitting on the sill, dreaming.
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Details
- First published
- 1857
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4 h 50 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Tolstoy, Leo. Youth. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/youth-tolstoy.
Tolstoy, L. (2026). Youth. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/youth-tolstoy (Original work published 1857)
Tolstoy, Leo. Youth. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/youth-tolstoy.
@book{tolstoy2026youth,
author = {Tolstoy, Leo},
title = {Youth},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/youth-tolstoy},
note = {First published 1857}
}
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What is Youth by Tolstoy about?
It follows Nicola Irtenieff from just before his sixteenth birthday through his first year at Moscow University. He tries to be good, clever, and admired, and learns slowly that showing off keeps him from real friends.
Is Youth a true story?
It is a novel that draws on Tolstoy's own early life, though names and events are shaped for fiction. It is the third part of a trilogy that begins with Childhood and Boyhood, and a grown narrator looks back on himself.
What does comme il faut mean in Youth?
It is French for correct or well bred. Nicola uses it as his main test of people, judging them by their French, their nails, their boots, and their air of boredom. Tolstoy calls this idea very destructive.
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.
“I date the beginning of my youth from that moment.”
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