Bøger af Maxim Gorky

Mother is the immortal classic of Maxim Gorky, one of the world's best-loved writers. It is the story of the radicalization of an uneducated woman from her dull peasant existence into active participation in her people's struggle for justice. Through her work she frees herself from the cowed state into which she has been beaten and her simple motherly concern for her son becomes a motherly concern for all oppressed. The book uses simple style to make it an easy read while slowly adding thicker and thicker layers of propaganda and pro Marxist Communist theory.

Maxim Gorky, the founder of social realism, was a Russian writer who pioneered literary style through his magnum opus, Mother. It is the story of the radicalization of an uneducated, hard-working peasant woman who faces domestic assaults by her husband. Mother raises the suppressed voices of the working-class people and depicts the power of dignity of an individual. Written in 1906, the book still stirs the emotional journey to the soul, showing the protective and selfless concerns of a mother for the crushed spirit of her people. Born of the people, and having experienced in his own person their sufferings and their misery, he was enabled by his extraordinary genius to voice their grievances and their aspirations in the book that has stood the test of time.

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 - 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian writer and political activist. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing.Gorky's most famous works are a short story collection Sketches and Stories (1899), plays The Philistines (1901), The Lower Depths (1902) and Children of the Sun (1905), a poem The Song of the Stormy Petrel (1901), his autobiographical trilogy My Childhood, In the World, My Universities (1913-1923), and a novel Mother (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and Mother has been frequently criticized (Gorky himself thought of Mother as one of his biggest failures). However, there have been warmer judgements of some less-known post-revolutionary works such as the cycles Fragments from My Diary (1924) and Stories of 1922-1924 (1925), the novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925-1936); the latter is considered Gorky's masterpiece and sometimes being viewed by critics as a modernist work. Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their "anti-psychologism"), these differ with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and "unmodern interest to human psychology" (as noted by D. S. Mirsky). He had associations with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs.Gorky was active in the emerging Marxist communist movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Lenin and Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there until his death in June 1936. After his return he was officially declared the "founder of Socialist Realism". Despite his official reputation, Gorky's relations with the Soviet regime were rather difficult. Modern scholars consider his ideology of God-Building as distinct from the official Marxism-Leninism, and his work fits uneasily under the Socialist Realist label. His work remains controversial. (wikipedia.org)

The last volume in Gorky’s grand autobiographical trilogy, "My Universities" covers the years of the author’s adolescence. The narrative provides a candid, unflinching portrayal of one of Russia's major revolutionary voices living among the impoverished and downtrodden of society. Throughout the narrative we follow Gorky as he takes on job after job and learns various life lessons that form the nucleus of his "university" education. The meticulous description of at first seemingly insignificant details reveal Gorky’s fine-tuned literary eye. A beautiful and realistic struggle of a man who hoped to tear down class barrier, and a call for compassion, this classic is a must-read.Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) forged his reputation among the most talented and original Russian modern writers. His position in Russian literature is indisputable, as demonstrated by his five Nobel Prize nominations. A dissenter and a Bolshevik associate, he led a turbulent life of exile, which marked his literary endeavours. A strong supporter of Russia’s political, social, and cultural transformation, Gorky’s name still echoes in the annals of history. His best-known works include "The Lower Depths", "My Childhood,", "Mother", and "Children of the Sun".