The Complete Short Novels [of Anton Chekhov] (Everyman's Library 277)

New York: Everyman's Library / Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Reprint. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. 5x1x8. Reprint. Brand new from publisher. 2004 Hard Cover. xli, 548 pp. Translated into English from the original Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, with an introduction by Pevear, select bibliography, a chronology, and notes. Five novellas in one volume, including: The Steppe; The Duel; The Story of an Unknown Man; My Life. Anton 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.