The Lower Depths (1902)

Well worth reading. ( )

Though this is technically still socialist realism, it's early enough that the term hadn't yet hist the heights of self-parodying, straitjacketing genre description that it — and Gorky himself — would reach in post-Revolution Russia.

Decent, though a lot of the newness of the ideas are now long since old hat. The relentless pessimism particularly with regards to the ending, for example, now seems like what you'd expect from a student just out of art school rather than an established writer. ( )