Forty Stories

If 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.

Contains:
The Little Apples
St. Peter’s Day
Green Scythe
Joy
The Ninny
The Highest Heights
Death of a Government Clerk
At the Post Office
Surgery
In the Cemetery
Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way
A Report
The Threat
The Huntsman
The Malefactor
A Dead Body
Sergeant Prishibeyev
A Blunder
Heartache
Anyuta
The Proposal
Vanka
Who Is to Blame?
Typhus
Sleepyhead
The Princess
Gusev
The Peasant Women
After the Theater
A Fragment
In Exile
Big Volodya and Little Volodya
The Student
Annie Round the Neck
The House with the Mezzanine
In the Horsecart
On Love
The Lady with the Pet Dog
The Bishop
The Bride