My Childhood Author:Maxim Gorky, Ronald Wilks (Translator) My Childhood, which appeared in 1913, is the first part of Maxim Gorky's autobiographical trilogy. The ordinary experiences of a Russian boy in the nineteenth century are recalled by an altogether extraordinary man, whose gift for recapturing the world of a child is uncanny. Across the vision of the boy perched abov... more »e the stove the Russian contrasts flicker -- barbaric gaiety and deep gloom, satanic cruelty and saintly forebearance, clownish knaves and holy fools. A shutter in the mind closes: thirty years later the pictures develop, as fresh, as vivid, as exotic as when they were taken.« less