Book

The Life of Klim Samgin

The Life of Klim Samgin (Russian: Жизнь Клима Самгина, romanized: Zhizn' Klima Samgina) is a four-volume novel written by Maxim Gorky from 1925 up to his death in 1936. It is Gorky's most ambitious work, intended to depict "all the classes, all the trends, all the tendencies, all the hell-like commotion of the last century, and all the storms of the 20th century." It follows the decline of Russian intelligentsia from the start of the 1870s and the assassination of Alexander II to the 1917 Revolution, seen through the eyes of Klim Samgin, a typical petit-bourgeois intellectual. The fourth and final part is unfinished and abruptly ends with the beginning of the February Revolution, although as seen from Gorky's drafts and fragments, Lenin's return to Russia in April 1917 and Samgin's death may have been intended as the possible ending. It is believed to be the inspiration behind Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago.

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