El adolescente

"So you have come here to break hearts, to conquer the great world, to take revenge on some poor devil, and all for the fact of being illegitimate, eh?": These somewhat insulting words, in the mouth of a secondary character, summarize no Despite the adventures of this novel very well. Arkady Makarovich Dolgoruki, its nineteen-year-old protagonist and narrator, is the illegitimate son of a nobleman and has grown up in Moscow, interned in a school where he has been humiliated. Now he comes to Saint Petersburg to really get to know his natural father, but determined out of pride to immediately break with him and dedicate himself to his "idea"... which at that time consists of getting rich, "a Rothschild", because he believes that only money guarantees a free and even ascetic existence. Of course this "idea" will have to change and follow the twisting Dostoevskian path that leads to the truth. Meanwhile, suicides, conspiracies, lurid family secrets, first loves and rivalries, roulette and "carnivorous impulses" that must be satisfied at all costs are precipitating.