Also known as A Raw Youth, this novel is narrated by Arkady Dolgoruky, a nineteen-year-old who is the illegitimate son of a nobleman. He arrives in St Petersburg with a private ambition to become rich and independent, and is soon caught up in family secrets, a scandalous document and the tangled affairs of the people around him. The book follows his confused growth toward maturity and his search for a father and for himself, in a rapidly changing society.