Mother : Maxim Gorky

Mother, the immortal classic of Maxim Gorky, one of the world’s best loved writers, 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.

To read Mother is to undergo a great emotional experience. It is a novel of strength and power, a tribute to the dignity of the individual. As one well-known literary critic puts it: “and then I came on Mother, the first of Gorky I had ever seen, and much of what I had read became thin and tasteless by comparison. It was tapestry after cotton and burlap, living, breathing people after cardboard cutouts… it was the hope and zeal of all human beings.