The narrator and protagonist of Dostoevskys novel The Adolescent (first published in English as A Raw Youth) is Arkady Dolgoruky, a nave 19-year-old boy bursting with ambition and opinions. The illegitimate son of a dissipated landowner, he is torn between his desire to expose his fathers wrongdoing and the desire to win his love. He travels to St. Petersburg to confront the father he barely knows, inspired by an inchoate dream of communion and armed with a mysterious document that he believes gives him power over others. This new English version by the most acclaimed of Dostoevskys translators is a masterpiece of pathos and high comedy.