The Steppe is a naturalism and coming of age novel all in one. The Duel has been adapted into a decent movie though the ending was lost in the film

Wow! 5 stories. The Steppe, The Duel, Story of an unknown man, Three Years, and My Life.

The Steppe - Set in the plains of the country about a journey through the countryside of a kid.

The Duel - Fight of the potential of a man against his follies and failures. Sometimes it takes an extreme moment in one;s life to change ones way mentally, but sometimes even that is not enough. Ofcourse in a book we want the hero to be triumphant!

Story of an unknown man - A servant or a spy get muddled in his master's life, and how it effects his own ways.

Three Years - A story of a merchant family man for three years filled with passionless love, death of a close one, thoughts on nobility and richness along with complicated relations between family members and relatives. Very interesting.

My Life - A rebel against the wishes and views of his father about life, work, nobility, and literacy. Is there always a purpose to man and mankind, is there a goal mankind is working towards each day? Is it enough just to live for one self with basic work and look at the educated as a poison to the society? But is the peasant society any better than the aristocracy? The novel is the best of the lot, carries lots of emotions, and sentiment and how life passes for the rebel. 5/5

NOTE: Out of the novellas in this collection, I've only read The Duelist

I'm taking a class where we read both the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation (this edition) and the translation by Constance Garnett. Everyone in the class preferred the Garnett translation! She does a better job capturing the poetry and the humor of the original; P&V's translation may stick closer to the literal Russian, but 9 times out of 10 when Garnett renders a phrase more loosely it reads more naturally in English while conveying the same meaning and staying loyal to the spirit of the original. E.g., P&V have Samoilenko refer to his friend Laevsky as "dear heart" while Garnett has him say "my dear boy." No doubt "dear heart" is exactly what it says in Russian, but it sticks out like a broken thumb. No one would say that in English, and "my dear boy" gets the point across just fine.

Garnett was a late Victorian Englishwoman, but on the whole her translation isn't hard to read or distractingly antiquated--and if there's sometimes a phrase that sounds a bit turn-of-the-20th-century, maybe that's OK given that Chekhov wrote the original around the turn of the 20th century. And, if you need further convincing, the Garnett translation of "The Duel and Other Stories" is in the public domain and available free from project Gutenberg.

CONCLUSION: I would not recommend buying this edition when you can find a copy of the (superior) Garnett translation for free.

Yet another one where I have a hard time coming up with a rating. I read a different volume - late short stories in German in an edition made before ISBN numbers and all that. It's not easy reading. All the stories in my volume were just the sadness of being Russian. If you're rich you're either secretly losing all your money or idle and depressed; if you're poor you're a farmer and an alcoholic. If the rich want to help the poor, the poor automatically behave like animals because they're uneducated alcoholics and the rich are naive idealists. If you fall in love you will either be ridiculously unhappy about two days after the wedding or you will be crossed in love and miserable and alone for the rest of your life. It's not happy reading, is what I'm saying, and there is a lot of thematic repetition.

Highlights: My Life, which had some real in-depth exploration of the whole idle wealthy vs. farmer issue as well as the unhappiness in love aspect. It was kind of nice that the narrator wanted to be a worker just because that was what he felt like and he wasn't wrong about it being the right thing for him, even if his wife was wrong about wanting to live in the country.

The Lady With the Dog: One of several midlife crisis stories Chekhov wrote, but a somewhat bearable one. I liked the whole idea of the relationship destroying the guy's cynicism even though the narrator was still relentlessly cynical about the chances of future happiness.

In der Schlucht/ In the Valley? No clue on English title. Probably my favorite story in the book, follows the life of a wealthy family in a small town, with useless sons but two helpful daughters-in-law, one of whom turns out to be a psychopath who murders babies. Also about how the dad slowly goes insane. Really a lot darker in terms of content than in terms of style which is just like gentle pastoral comedy, and then BOOM, child death.

Herzchen was also cute, if weird. Followed Olga, who could only have an identity if she had a partner. She married twice and had one lover, but whenever she didn't have a husband she lost all sense of self and all opinions and everything. In the end she found a kid to mother. I presume when the kid grew up and left, she died miserably.

To be honest, those were the only four really memorable stories to me. There were a few that featured the same characters, but they were kind of meh in that the characters were just framing devices for stories about other stuff. As for remaining content, see above - agrarian misery, idle wealth, unhappy relationships and the expending gap between parts of Russian society.

Racconti divertenti, fantasiosi, a volte con finali tristi. "La signora col cagnolino" spicca un po', ma il livello resta sempre alto.

From the opening paragraph of the earliest novel, THE STEPPE, in THE COMPLETE SHORT NOVELS OF ANTON CHEKHOV, it’s clear that at the age of 28 the author had already mastered the vivid detail that lets language open a world on the page:

“On an early July morning a battered, springless britzka — one of those antediluvian britzkas now driven in Russia only by merchants’ agents, herdsmen, and poor priests - rolled out of the district town of N., in _____ province, and went thundering down the post road. It rattled and shrieked at the slightest movement, glumly seconded by the bucket tied to its rear —and from these sounds alone, and the pitiful leather tatters hanging from its shabby body, one could tell how decrepit it was and ready for the scrap heap.”

I was immediately pulled in and ready to read on.

The farther you go in THE DUEL, published three years later in 1891, the more ambiguous and expansive the title becomes. Yes, there is eventually an actual duel, but other conflicts between and within characters abound. A church deacon who responds to even the most fraught situations with laughter is a delectable motif.

The third of the five short novels in the collection, THE STORY OF AN UNKNOWN MAN (1892), is for this reader the least successful and seems to have needed another draft or so. Something in the melodramatic narrative gets lost; something seems never to have been found. Although this one doesn’t finally win me over, it’s a tribute to Chekhov’s artistry that the writing kept me going, engaged and to an extent believing, until the end. Chekhov’s the sort of writer in whom you’re willing to forgive and accept a lot, particularly when he can give you a passage as striking as this, in which the narrator is convalescing in Venice:

“But now I was allowed to go out on the balcony. The sun and the light breeze from the sea pamper and caress my ailing body. I look down on the long-familiar gondolas, which float with feminine grace, smoothly and majestically, as if they are alive and feel all the luxury of this original, charming culture. There is a smell of the sea. Somewhere a stringed instrument is being played and two voices are singing. How good! How unlike the Petersburg night when wet snow was falling and lashing my face so rudely. Now, if you look directly across the channel, you can see the seashore, and over the vastness of the horizon, the sun ripples so brightly on the water that it hurts to look. My soul is drawn there, to the dear, good sea to which I gave my youth. I want to live! To live — and nothing more!” (The abrupt shift of tense at the beginning of this passage gives immediacy to the memory.)

THREE YEARS, published in 1895, probably suffers from underdeveloped autobiographical origins, but, again, in spite of any shortcomings it pulls a reader forward until the end. Isn’t this the basic test of narrative strength?

The final short novel in the collection, MY LIFE (1896), is the surest masterpiece. Listen to how it gets started:

“The manager said to me: ‘I keep you only out of respect for your esteemed father, otherwise I’d have sent you flying long ago.’ I answered him: ‘You flatter me too much, Your Excellency, in supposing i can fly.’ And then I heard him say: ‘Take the gentleman away, he’s bad for my nerves.’

“Two days later I was dismissed.”

With that, once again I was ready to read on, and I did so with deep pleasure all the way through. The vivid detail — of scene, weather, attire, facial expressions, etc. — brings the narrative into full and sustained bloom. I found myself wondering if Saul Bellow ever had anything to say about this tale in which a character “of noble birth” turns his back on the privileged class and lives as proletariat.

The translation from the Russian in the Everyman’s Library edition is by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the invaluable couple who through the years have given readers so much for which we have to be deeply grateful. Pevear’s introduction concludes with this: “Though he (Chekhov) was often accused of being indifferent, and some times claimed it himself, that is the last thing he was.”

The handsome hardbound edition is done in cloth with an attached ribbon bookmark.

This review is only for the short story, 'The House with an Attic'. This is a trademark Anton Chekhov short story. Only he could right this sort of beauties. Just like you spot a painting of Picasso at a glance , you can identify a good Anton Chekhov story by just reading couple of pages of it. That's why he's my favorite short story writer of all time.

A compilation of the five novellas Chekhov wrote.
The Steppe - A young boy named Egorushka is being sent by his mother to a distant village to receive an education. He is being taken by his elderly uncle along with the rector of a church. They set off in a carriage in an attempt to catch up with a wagon train traveling across the Steppe. The story is, primarily, about incidences that they are involved in and their interaction with a variety of characters they meet along the way.

The Duel - The story about a man who has been living with a married woman he ran away with two years before but has since fallen out of love with. He gets into an argument with a man who then challenges him to a duel with pistols. However, they both miss. Afterward the man catches the woman having sex with another man and decides he still loves her and so they marry.

The Story of an Unknown Man - The story is narrated by a man who is working as a servant for a wealthy family. He is actually an undercover agent for a revolutionary group and has been sent to assassinate the wealthy man. He is repelled by how the wealthy man treats his lover buts decides not to complete his mission anyway. After a series of events he ends up with the womans baby after she died in childbirth.

Three Years - A wealthy man falls in love with a young woman. She does not love him back but reluctantly agrees to marry him. In a short time they both realize that it was a big mistake but as the years pass they begin to change their opinion.

My Life - A young man born into the upper class is dissatisfied with working in the intellectual occupation as he is expected to. He wants to work as a common laborer against his father wishes.

The Complete Short Stories is a marvellous collection. I was previously only familiar with Chekhov's plays, so I was keen to sample his fiction writing. These stories did not disappoint. They are well structured, interesting tales populated with intriguing characters. Although I enjoyed them all, my favourites were probably "The Story of an Unknown Man" and "My Life". Recommended for fans of Chekhov or for anyone who enjoys 19th century Russian literature.

Dnf, I find Anton Chekhov's writing too boring to tolerate any further.

A slice of Russian provincial life from the late 19th century, told in five tales.

In this book Chekhov provides us with a glimpse into family life - love, loss, betrayal, infidelity - together with drunkeness, spite, theft and fury. In some ways these themes make for a modern read, and indeed some of the plots could be TV soaps with just a few modernising tweaks. However other aspects are alien - there is lots written about servants and horses, and we see the thrill of the newfangled railways as they start to carpet the country. In particular the episode in the first story "The Steppe" where a seven year old boy goes skinny dipping with adults he has only just met and is then rubbed down with oil by a priest - innocence that jars in these more jaded and cynical times.

My own favourite story was the Duel, where a philanderer and wastrel is brought to his senses in the face of death, rediscovers love and one assumes lives happy ever after.

Though known for his plays and short stories, Anton Chekhov was an accomplished novelist as well. Four of these five novellas attest to that. (The fifth, “The Steppe,” is a long wagon ride that never seems to end; regrettably it’s the first in the book.). The other four are full of rich characters. If you love Russians arguing over the philosophies of the day, you won’t be disappointed. If not, there are enough bitter fights over crumbling marriages to spark a reader’s interest. “The Duel,” a war of egos between a clinically depressed man and an obnoxiously superior zoologist that culminates in a tense duel, was my favorite. Recommended, if you skip “The Steppe.”