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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... villages of southern Russia and the country estates where he sometimes spent his holidays during the last years of his schooling. Gaiety and impudence keep creeping in. “The Little Apples,” written in 1880, when he was twenty, describes ...
... villages of southern Russia and the country estates where he sometimes spent his holidays during the last years of his schooling. Gaiety and impudence keep creeping in. “The Little Apples,” written in 1880, when he was twenty, describes ...
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... village. “The women and children will be too terrified to sleep....” At first the examining magistrate made a wry ... village, the witnesses, the village constable with his tin badge, the widow roaring away fifty yards from the post ...
... village. “The women and children will be too terrified to sleep....” At first the examining magistrate made a wry ... village, the witnesses, the village constable with his tin badge, the widow roaring away fifty yards from the post ...
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... village. Where, how, and when they had the time to steal it remained a mystery, but they were terribly proud of their heroic feat and kept smiling to themselves. The post-mortem revealed twenty fractured ribs, emphysema, and a smell of ...
... village. Where, how, and when they had the time to steal it remained a mystery, but they were terribly proud of their heroic feat and kept smiling to themselves. The post-mortem revealed twenty fractured ribs, emphysema, and a smell of ...
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... village, the oak tree, the policeman with the tin badge and the crowds of villagers, the local doctor and the decrepit examining magistrate, would all, it would seem, find their proper place in any story he wrote about the dead body ...
... village, the oak tree, the policeman with the tin badge and the crowds of villagers, the local doctor and the decrepit examining magistrate, would all, it would seem, find their proper place in any story he wrote about the dead body ...
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... village to village in a broken-down carriage, curing bodies and healing souls, driving himself so furiously that, as he once complained, he had become a kind of cupboard which was falling apart. There was gaiety in Chekhov always, but ...
... village to village in a broken-down carriage, curing bodies and healing souls, driving himself so furiously that, as he once complained, he had become a kind of cupboard which was falling apart. There was gaiety in Chekhov always, but ...
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