The Very Best Of Anton Chekhov

The Very Best Of Anton Chekhov: Short Stories

Anton Chekov (author)

Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his short stories are held in high esteem by both writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." He was a literary artist with a crisp style who probed below the surface of life, laying bare the secret motives of his characters. He could take the most trivial, simple incidents from everyday material and create magical stories from them. As he liked to put it, “To the people you must offer people and not yourself.” While weaving these events with everyday characters, Chekov, in a peculiar fashion, also gives you a very real glimpse of Russian life during his time. You may as well be walking among his characters. Chekhov’s best plays and short stories lack complex plots and neat solutions. Concentrating on apparent trivialities, they create a special kind of atmosphere, sometimes termed haunting or lyrical. This collection includes some of his most memorable stories, including The Huntsman, The Lady with the Dog, About Love, and The Black Monk. These stories will give you a glimpse into his greatness and a taste of his incomparable style. Embassy Books proudly presents this book as part of the Embassy Classics Series, which comprises of some of the finest literary works of great authors.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (/ˈtʃɛkɔːf, -ɒf/; Russian: Анто́н Па́влович Че́хов, pronounced [ɐnˈton ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕɛxəf]; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theater.Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text".

Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Embassy Books (3 April 2017)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9789386450203
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 1.6 x 21.59 cm