A translation of the Bengali novel Yubok Yubotira, first published in 1967, The Youth is remarkable for its realistic portrayal of the lives of a group of young men and women and their strife to find the meaning of their existence. In his foreword to the second edition, the author writes that this was a kind of a journal of the lives and times of his friends and by extension, the youth around him. The confusions and inner turmoil of the characters, captured in vivid detail, are powerfully evocative of a crucial phase of life. The reader will not find it difficult to identify with the men and women who people its pages.