{"product_id":"2026200013638-secondhand-childhood","title":"Childhood","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the poverty-stricken backstreets of Nizhny Novgorod emerges one of Russian literature's most haunting memoirs — Maxim Gorky's Childhood chronicles the turbulent early years of Alexei Peshkov, a boy thrust into the harsh custody of his maternal grandparents following his father's death, navigating a world riven by cruelty, drunken violence, and rare but luminous moments of tenderness. Set against the grim tapestry of provincial Russian life in the 1870s, the novel presents a searing portrait of resilience, as young Alexei absorbs the brutality around him while being quietly shaped by the fierce, storytelling spirit of his grandmother — a woman whose warmth becomes his singular lifeline in a household consumed by rage and despair.\n\nThe first instalment of Gorky's celebrated autobiographical trilogy — followed by My Apprenticeship and My Universities — Childhood stands as a foundational text of Russian realism, illustrating the social conditions that would later fuel revolutionary consciousness across the nation. Gorky's prose is unflinching yet luminous, balancing documentary precision with lyrical humanity, and his unforgettable portrait of a boy forging identity amid chaos continues to resonate with readers more than a century after its first publication in 1913. What kind of man does such a childhood make — and at what cost?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203392807131,"sku":"2026200013638-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/7209bb4a-ac28-454c-adfb-a7480582b06b.png?v=1788148424","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200013638-secondhand-childhood","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}