Leo Tolstoy began his trilogy, "Childhood, Boyhood, Youth", in his early twentie
s. Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an 'awkward mixture o
f fact and fiction', generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel t
o be a charming and insightful portrait of inner growth against the background o
f a world limned with extraordinary clarity, grace and colour. Evident too in it
s brilliant account of a young person's emerging awareness of the world and of h
is place within it are many of the stances, techniques and themes that would com
e to full flower in the immortal War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and in the oth
er great works of Tolstoy's maturity.
