Maxim Gorky

A Volga merchant's son inherits the barges, the money and the trade, and cannot make himself want any of it - he drinks, he asks people what life is for, and nobody in the merchant world has an answer. Gorky - the name means Bitter - was orphaned at eleven, worked as a dishwasher, baker and dock hand and shot himself at nineteen; this 1899 novel is the first great portrait of the class that was running Russia and did not know why.