Anton Chekhov

Author: Donald Rayfield
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571309291
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 594

Book Description
The description 'definitive' is too easily used, but Donald Rayfield's biography of Chekhov merits it unhesitatingly. To quote no less an authority than Michael Frayn: 'With question the definitive biography of Chekhov, and likely to remain so for a very long time to come. Donald Rayfield starts with the huge advantage of much new material that was prudishly suppressed under the Soviet regime, or tactfully ignored by scholars. But his mastery of all the evidence, both old and new - a massive archive - is magisterial, his background knowledge of the period is huge; his Russian is sensitive to every colloquial nuance of the day, and his tone is sure. He captures a likeness of the notoriously elusive Chekhov which at last begins to seem recognisably human - and even more extraordinary.' Chekhov's life was short, he was only forty-four when he died, and dogged with ill-health but his plays and short stories assure him of his place in the literary pantheon. Here is a biography that does him full justice, in short, unapologetically to repeat that word 'definitive'. 'I don't remember any monograph by a Western scholar on a Russian author having such success. . . Nikita Mikhalkov said that before this book came out we didn't know Chekhov. . . The author doesn't invent, add or embellish anything . . . Rayfield is motivated by the Westerner's urge not ot hold information back, however grim it may be.' Anatoli Smelianski, Director of Moscow Arts Theatre School 'It is hard to imagine another book about Chekhov after this one by Donald Rayfield.' Arthur Miller, Sunday Times 'Donald Rayfield's exemplary biography draws on a daunting array of material inacessible or ignored by his predecessors.' Nikolai Tolstoy, The Literary Review 'Donald Rayfield, Chekhov's best and definitive biographer.' William Boyd, Guardian

The Complete Short Novels

Author: Anton Chekhov
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030742829X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 578

Book Description
(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 novels–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 Steppe–the most lyrical of the five–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 figures–a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility–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.

Short Stories by Anton Chekhov

Author: Anton Chekhov
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780848825751
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description

Understanding Chekhov

Author: Donald Rayfield
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299163143
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Of all Russian writers, Chekhov is one of the best liked and most easily appreciated. Yet because his work is subtle and understated, we need help to understand him. Chekhov can be (as his friends complained) the most elusive of writers, and one who appears capable of having two opposite views and opposite intentions simultaneously. Donald Rayfield, one of the world's foremost Chekhov scholars, reveals the layers of meaning on which the stories and plays are built. All Chekhov's important works are studied: we see how closely the two genres are connected and gain insight into Chekhov's rapid development over his brief twenty years of creative life, from medical student supplementing his income by writing comic stories, to father of twentieth-century drama and narrative prose.

About Chekhov

Author: Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810123886
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
Seven years after the death of Anton Chekhov, his sister, Maria, wrote to a friend, "You asked for someone who could write a biography of my deceased brother. If you recall, I recommended Iv. Al. Bunin . . . . No one writes better than he; he knew and understood my deceased brother very well; he can go about the endeavor objectively. . . . I repeat, I would very much like this biography to correspond to reality and that it be written by I.A. Bunin." In About Chekhov Ivan Bunin sought to free the writer from limiting political, social, and aesthetic assessments of his life and work, and to present both in a more genuine, insightful, and personal way. Editor and translator Thomas Gaiton Marullo subtitles About Chekhov "The Unfinished Symphony," because although Bunin did not complete the work before his death in 1953, he nonetheless fashioned his memoir as a moving orchestral work on the writers' existence and art. . . . "Even in its unfinished state, About Chekhov stands not only as a stirring testament of one writer's respect and affection for another, but also as a living memorial to two highly creative artists." Bunin draws on his intimate knowledge of Chekhov to depict the writer at work, in love, and in relation with such writers as Tolstoy and Gorky. Through anecdotes and observations, spirited exchanges and reflections, this memoir draws a unique portrait that plumbs the depths and complexities of two of Russia's greatest writers.

The Undiscovered Chekhov

Author: Anton Chekhov
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 9781583220269
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
The Undiscovered Chekhov gives us, in rich abundance, a new Chekhov. Peter Constantine's historic collection presents 38 new stories and with them a fresh interpretation of the Russian master. In contrast to the brooding representative of a dying century we have seen over and over, here is Chekhov's work from the 1880s, when Chekhov was in his twenties and his writing was sharp, witty and innovative. Many of the stories in The Undiscovered Chekhov reveal Chekhov as a keen modernist. Emphasizing impressions and the juxtaposition of incongruent elements, instead of the straight narrative his readers were used to, these stories upturned many of the assumptions of storytelling of the period. Here is "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town," written as a series of telegrams, beginning with "Have been drinking to Sarah's health all week! Enchanting! She actually dies standing up!..." In "Confession...," a thirty-nine year old bachelor recounts some of the fifteen times chance foiled his marriage plans. In "How I Came to be Lawfully Wed," a couple reminisces about the day they vowed to resist their parents' plans that they should marry. And in the more familiarly Chekhovian "Autumn," an alcoholic landowner fallen low and a peasant from his village meet far from home in a sad and haunting reunion in which the action of the story is far less important than the powerful impression it leaves with the reader that each man must live his life and has his reasons.

The Prank

Author: Anton Chekhov
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 159017836X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
Twelve early comedic short stories by the Russian master of the form. An NYRB Classics Original The Prank is Chekhov’s own selection of the best of his early work, the first book he put together and the first book he hoped to publish. Assembled in 1882, with illustrations by Nikolay Chekhov, the book was then presented to the censor for approval—which was denied. Now, more than a hundred and thirty years later, The Prank appears here for the first time in any language. At the start of his twenties, when he was still in medical school, Anton Chekhov was also busily setting himself up as a prolific and popular writer. Appearing in a wide range of periodicals, his shrewd, stinging, funny stories and sketches turned a mocking eye on the mating rituals and money-grubbing habits of the middle classes, the pretensions of aspiring artists and writers, bureaucratic corruption, drunken clowning, provincial ignorance, petty cruelty—on Russian life, in short. Chekhov was already developing his distinctive ear for spoken language, its opacities and evasions, the clichés we shelter behind and the clichés that betray us. The lively stories in The Prank feature both the themes and the characteristic tone that make Chekhov among the most influential and beloved of modern writers.

How to Write Like Chekhov

Author: Anton Chekhov
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0786727012
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
Maxim Gorky said that no one understood -- the tragedy of life's trivialities -- as clearly as Anton Chekhov, widely considered the father of the modern short story and the modern play. Chekhov's singular ability to speak volumes with a single, impeccably chosen word, mesh comedy and pathos, and capture life's basic sadness as he entertains us, are why so many aspire to emulate him. How to Write Like Chekhov meticulously cherry-picks from Chekhov's plays, stories, and letters to his publisher, brother, and friends, offering suggestions and observations on subjects including plot and characters (and their names), descriptions and dialogue, and what to emphasize and avoid. This is a uniquely clear roadmap to Chekhov's intelligence and artistic expertise and an essential addition to the writing-guide shelf.

Sakhalin Island

Author: Anton Chekhov
Publisher: Alma Books
ISBN: 0714545619
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 529

Book Description
In 1890, the thirty-year-old Chekhov, already knowing that he was ill with tuberculosis, undertook an arduous eleven-week journey from Moscow across Siberia to the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin. Now collected here in one volume are the fully annotated translations of his impressions of his trip through Siberia and the account of his three-month sojourn on Sakhalin Island, together with his notes and extracts from his letters to relatives and associates.Highly valuable both as a detailed depiction of the Tsarist system of penal servitude and as an insight into Chekhov's motivations and objectives for visiting the colony and writing the expose, Sakhalin Island is a haunting work which had a huge impact both on Chekhov's career and on Russian society.

Fifty-two Stories, 1883-1898

Author: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525520813
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 529

Book Description
From the celebrated, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and War and Peace a lavish, masterfully rendered volume of stories by one of the most influential short fiction writers of all time. Chekhov's genius left an indelible impact on every literary form in which he wrote, but none more so than short fiction. Now, renowned translators and longtime house authors Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky give us their peerless renderings of fifty-two Chekhov stories--a full deck These stories, which span the full arc of his career, reveal the extraordinary variety and unexpectedness of his work, from the farcically comic to the darkly complex, showing that there is no one type of "Chekhov story." They are populated by a remarkable range of characters who come from all parts of Russia, all walks of life, and who, taken together, have democratized the short story. Included here are a number of never-before-translated stories, including "Reading" and "An Educated Blockhead." Here is a collection that promises profound delight.