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.