Otto isn't an ordinary penguin: he is the first penguin chick to be born that year, which means that it is his job to look after all the other young penguins. But out in the snow and ice of Antarctica, there is an awful lot to learn, and Otto has to discover for himself how to swim, dive, and catch fish before he can teach anyone else. And how will he do that when all the grown-ups are too busy to help?
Young Stalin is a remarkable adventure story about an exceptional, turbulent young man, born in exoticism, raised in the church, fancying himself a poet, then embracing revolutionary idealism and thereby finding his romantic Messianic mission in life.