Forty StoriesIf any writer can be said to have invented the modern short story, it is Anton Chekhov. It is not just that Chekhov democratized this art form; more than that, he changed the thrust of short fiction from relating to revealing. And what marvelous and unbearable things are revealed in these Forty Stories. The abashed happiness of a woman in the presence of the husband who abandoned her years before. The obsequious terror of the official who accidentally sneezes on a general. The poignant astonishment of an aging Don Juan overtaken by love. Spanning the entirety of Chekhov's career and including such masterpieces as "Surgery," "The Huntsman," "Anyuta," "Sleepyhead," "The Lady With the Pet Dog," and "The Bishop," this collection manages to be amusing, dazzling, and supremely moving—often within a single page. |
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... hands trouble him: they are the hands of a peasant, large, dry and hot, and he does not always know what to do with them. Excessively handsome, slender and elegant, he knew his power over people and drew them to him like a magnet. This ...
... hands trouble him: they are the hands of a peasant, large, dry and hot, and he does not always know what to do with them. Excessively handsome, slender and elegant, he knew his power over people and drew them to him like a magnet. This ...
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... hand. In a few pages the whole absurd, lamentable history of these people is revealed: the indifference of the husband, the yearning of the wife, the infinite spaces which separate them even when they are standing together. The wife is ...
... hand. In a few pages the whole absurd, lamentable history of these people is revealed: the indifference of the husband, the yearning of the wife, the infinite spaces which separate them even when they are standing together. The wife is ...
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... hands on, and as a spy he was incomparable. The clerks in the village call him “a bloody dragoon.” Hardly a day passes but some peasants or landowning neighbors of Trifon Semyonovich lodge a complaint about the atrocious behavior of ...
... hands on, and as a spy he was incomparable. The clerks in the village call him “a bloody dragoon.” Hardly a day passes but some peasants or landowning neighbors of Trifon Semyonovich lodge a complaint about the atrocious behavior of ...
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... hands and knees, picking up windfalls. He tossed the unripe apples into the bushes, but the ripe ones were tenderly presented to his Dulcinea in his broad and dirty hands. Dulcinea showed not the slightest alarm over the condition of ...
... hands and knees, picking up windfalls. He tossed the unripe apples into the bushes, but the ripe ones were tenderly presented to his Dulcinea in his broad and dirty hands. Dulcinea showed not the slightest alarm over the condition of ...
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... hands. If he found thieves, he shut them up in a cellar for twenty-four hours, or flogged them with nettles, or sent them away after stripping them stark naked. Is this news for you? There are people with whom such behavior is as stale ...
... hands. If he found thieves, he shut them up in a cellar for twenty-four hours, or flogged them with nettles, or sent them away after stripping them stark naked. Is this news for you? There are people with whom such behavior is as stale ...
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