The Complete Short Novels

About the book

For the centenary of chekhov's death, a new translation of his short novels - brought together in one volume for the first time. Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, never wrote a full-length novel, but he wrote five works long enough to be called short novels. The steppe - perhaps the most lyrical of the five - is an account of a young boy's frightening journey to enroll at a distant school. The duel sets two decadent figures - a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility - on a collision course. In the story of an unknown man, a political radical becomes valet to the son of an important official in order to spy on him, but finds that his own terminal illness has changed his long-held priorities in startling ways. Three years recounts the irony-laden life of a rich but passive moscow merchant. In my life, a man renounces wealth and social position for a life of manual labour, only to discover that the moral simplicity of his ideals is in conflict with the complex realities of life. In these five short novels, chekhov's masterful storytelling and his profound understanding of human nature are brilliantly evinced.