The Complete Short Novels — Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Aanton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novelsâ€"here brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

The Steppeâ€"the most lyrical of the fiveâ€"is an account of a nine-year-old boy's frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figuresâ€"a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibilityâ€"on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals. In The Story of an Unknown Man, a political radical spying on an important official by serving as valet to his son gradually discovers that his own terminal illness has changed his long-held priorities in startling ways. Three Years recounts a complex series of ironies in the personal life of a rich but passive Moscow merchant. In My Life, a man renounces wealth and social position for a life of manual labor.

The resulting conflict between the moral simplicity of his ideals and the complex realities of human nature culminates in a brief apocalyptic vision that is unique in Chekhov's work.