GREAT PLAY-says so much about life and love.
Character driven.
Sad, but it's Checkov
Well worth the read!

This is one of Russian classics. All stories by Anton P. Checkov would touch your soul but this is one of the best of them, picturing young lady struggling with prejudices of the society. I love his stories for being the mirror of Russian life of the dawn of XX century.

I have always resonated to Russian literature, and there is no better story teller than Chekov and no better story reader than Mr. Charlton Griffin. His dramatization of these timeless stories brings them to the listener with the richness that must have been intended by Chekhov. Mr. Griffin illucidates the stories and gives life to Chekhov's rich brilliance beyond what one might experience reading the stories on his own. If you like first rate literature of timeless high quality in an audio format, this selection is for you. Don't miss it.

I found Chekov's book on the last day of my university library clearance sale. It was hidden in a bin cluttered with countless, unremarkable books. After buying it for 10 cents I opened the cover and cracked the frail binding. The copy was over 30 years old.

I became engrossed in the stories and had trouble putting it down (and during final test week!)Chekov was one of the great short story writers of any country at any time.

I felt horrible at the end. I bought this book -worth unspoken amounts- for a dime. I was a thief. Unfortunately sending a check to his family or giving it back to the library (they don't want it) was impossible. So as repayment the only thing I can do is encourage others to pick up this jewel.

I didn't know Chekov was considered a master of the short story until I read Janet Malcolm's pieces about him in The New Yorker. So I started with this book, which contains some of his earliest stories. Each story is amazing and in them you can see him progressing into his own unique style. This is a great book to start with if you're reading Chekov for the first time.

Anton Chekhov is a brilliant writer! I am a fan of short stories and his are exceptionally good. I am re-reading "The Lady with the Pet Dog" right now because I plan to write a paper on it for my Writing class. I love how Chekhov creates his characters (such as Dmitry in "The Lady with.."). In this particular story, he makes Dmitry a detestable and seemingly typical male, but by the end of the story, the readers can't help but feel for Dmitry Dmitrich. This is part of Chekhov's genius.

In 1890, Anton Chekhov traveled across Russia to the island of Sakhalin to visit a prison colony there and write a book about what he found. The trip was so arduous as to be almost suicidal, and no-one has ever clearly understood why Chekhov desired such a journey.

James McConkey's To a Distant Island is partially a chronicle of Chekhov's journey, but there is much more to the book than that. McConkey uses Chekhov's letters, the book he wrote when he returned, and various biographies to weave a speculative narrative. There are many gaps in the documentary evidence, and McConkey fills these gaps in with fictional scenes and suppositions, adding color and depth where previously there have only been shadows. He links moments in the journey to Chekhov's own stories and plays with tremendous insight -- indeed, McConkey's odd book offers some of the best literary criticism of Chekhov written in English.

Additionally, the book is a sort of memoir. McConkey first discovered Chekhov's Sakhalin letters while traveling in Florence and fleeing depression and discontent with his life, a confluence of psychology and situation which allowed him to be particularly empathetic to Chekhov's journey. At first, his discussion of himself within the book seemed anachronistic and intrusive, but I came to enjoy and even relish the memoiristic elements of To a Distant Island as much as I did the material about Chekhov.

I don't know of another book like To a Distant Island. It is lyrical, surprising, informative, and deeply affecting. Chekhov comes alive far more in this slim volume than in all the hundreds of pages of Donald Rayfield's exhaustive recent biography. This book could serve as a fine introduction to Chekhov's life and works, it could be tremendously fascinating to people who are already familiar with Chekhov, and I expect it would even prove to be a rewarding read for lovers of literature in general who have no particular interest in Chekhov. At the very least, if you appreciate fine writing, you will appreciate this book.

'The Undiscovered Chekhov' is a real tressure for Chekhov lovers. This is a collection of 38 stories previously untranslated to English-speaking readers. The original stories published in Russian magazines while Chekhov was studying medicine at Moscow University in the 1880s represent new angles in many ways. They provide great insights into young Chekhov's talents as an innovative and a gifted writer. Secondly, they represent Chekhov's early experimentations with narratives and techniques even before he became well known as a master craftsman of modern short stories. Thirdly, the stories translated by a gifted translator provide an excellent historical account of Chekhov's contemporary Russia.

As Peter Constantine records in his introduction the discovery of the original Russian stories at the New York Public Library is also an interesting story. The introduction provides an excellent background to the Chekhov's life, his techniques as well as background to some of the stories.

This collection is a rare gift for anyone who wants to know how a modern master story-teller had begun his career.

I am myself an actor in Geneva (Switzerland) and I am working just now on that play by Chekhov. It is, I think, the best one act play by him. It is about a wedding in a middle-class russian family. The whole family is waiting for a general coming at the wedding. Someone finally comes but he is completly crazy and deaf. The wedding ends in a total disorder. the intersting thing in that short play is that it requires about 20 actors to be played as Chekhov asks it. The main theme is the impossibility of communication in this middle-class russian society. It is interesting to note that the way of playing required by the texte is far away from the Stanislavsky's technic. This is a very interesting point because it gives keys to understand the whole Chekhov's theater. Our play will take place in Geneva (Switzerland) at the Saint-Gervais theater from the ninth to 27th of september 1997. Review by Epaminonde M. Aplombo

This was a completely great book. I loved it so much. It was a wonderful tale of a man who thinks his wife is a witch. She actually is. It's comical. But then the comedy turns bad when you see how miserable they rae.