Coloured by poverty and horrifying brutality, Gorky's childhood equipped him to understand—in a way denied to a Tolstoy or a Turgenev—the life of the ordinary Russian. After his father, a paperhanger and upholsterer, died of cholera, five-year-old Gorky was taken to live with his grandfather, a polecat-faced tyrant who would regularly beat him unconscious, and with his grandmother, a tender mountain of a woman and a wonderful storyteller, who would kneel beside their bed (with Gorky inside it pretending to be asleep) and give God her views on the day's happenings, down to the last fascinating details. She was, in fact, Gorky's closest friend and the epic heroine of a book swarming with characters and with the sensations of a curious and often frightened little boy. "My Childhood", the first volume of Gorky's autobiographical trilogy, was in part an act of exorcism. It describes a life begun in the raw, remembered with extraordinary charm and poignancy and without bitterness. Of all Gorky's books this is the one that made him "the father of Russian literature".

《我的童年》是高尔基自传体小说的第一部，是作者童年生活的回忆。主人公欧利沙四岁丧父，跟随母亲住在小染坊主外祖父家。他经常遭受外祖父的毒打，善良的外祖母处处护着他。他童年的成长环境里充斥着谎言、欺骗和为达到目的不惜践踏亲情的残酷行为，使他幼小的心灵受到极大的伤害。然而，勤劳、坚强、善良的外祖母常常给他讲神话故事，向他灌输正义的力量，引导着欧利沙成长为一个刚直不阿的人。