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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... night and sleeps little. He is nearly always smiling or breaking out into huge peals of laughter. Only his 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 ...
... night and sleeps little. He is nearly always smiling or breaking out into huge peals of laughter. Only his 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 ...
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... night there came, like a messenger from another world, a huge black moth which burst into the room like a whirlwind and kept beating its wings madly against the electric lights. The funeral took place a week later in Moscow. Gorky and ...
... night there came, like a messenger from another world, a huge black moth which burst into the room like a whirlwind and kept beating its wings madly against the electric lights. The funeral took place a week later in Moscow. Gorky and ...
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... night when his characters are warming themselves over a fire. After spending the day in the anatomy laboratory, he would spend his evenings writing about the quiet villages of southern Russia and the country estates where he sometimes ...
... night when his characters are warming themselves over a fire. After spending the day in the anatomy laboratory, he would spend his evenings writing about the quiet villages of southern Russia and the country estates where he sometimes ...
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... widow roaring away fifty yards from the post-mortem, and two peasants acting as custodians near the corpse. Near these silent custodians a small campfire was dying down. To guard over a corpse day and night until the arrival of.
... widow roaring away fifty yards from the post-mortem, and two peasants acting as custodians near the corpse. Near these silent custodians a small campfire was dying down. To guard over a corpse day and night until the arrival of.
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Anton Chekhov. over a corpse day and night until the arrival of the authorities is one of the unpaid duties of peasants. The body, in a red shirt and a pair of new boots, was covered with a sheet. On the sheet was a towel with an icon on ...
Anton Chekhov. over a corpse day and night until the arrival of the authorities is one of the unpaid duties of peasants. The body, in a red shirt and a pair of new boots, was covered with a sheet. On the sheet was a towel with an icon on ...
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