The illegitimate son of a landowner and his common wife, Arkady Dolgoruky, has seen little of his parents throughout his life. In a narrative that combines farce and pathological dramatization, Dostoevsky describes Arkady's visit to Saint Petersburg in search of the 'random family' that dominated his dreams. The confrontation with them does not unfold exactly as he imagined. This relatively later novel, written in the last decade of the author's life, captures the extroversion and awkwardness, the happiness and unhappiness of adolescence in all its uncertainty and absurdity.