''Three of Them'' (Russian ' "Three") is a 1901 novel by

Maksim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and sociali ...

. The plot concerns Ilya Lunyev, a boy from an urban slum, who enters the middle-class milieu only to be disillusioned to find the same moral corruption.F. M. Borras ''Maxim Gorky the writer: an interpretation'' 1967 p.104 "The hero of The ''Three of Them'', Ilya Lunyev, is a boy who grows up among the filth and brutality of an urban slum, conceives a dream of middle-class respectability as the peak of human happiness, and achieves his dream through successful commercial activity, only to perceive that the social sphere to which he had so fervently aspired is morally corrupt."

References

1901 novels Novels by Maxim Gorky {{1900s-novel-stub