"The Duel" by Anton Chekhov, is a classic exploration of the human mind. I would definitely recommend you read this book because it is an incredible story told through the eyes and minds of many completely different people, all striving for the same thing; to forgot the days they lost, and make the best of the days they still have. This is a great message and a good wake up call to all those who waste time, telling us to appreciate the little things, and not waste a life on petty squabbles. That is another reason I would recommend this book, because of the moral. But most importantly, it's intriguing story. Anton Chekhov pits a general, an adulterous doctor, a zoologist, a deacon, and a mistress in a small town in the Caucasus. He tells the story through all their eyes, and you find out all of these people, whether they are in love, friends, rivals, or just acquaintances, all just wish for the wings to fly away and escape the tediousness of everyday life. All this centers around the hatred between the zoologist and the doctor, which eventually explodes into the duel. When faced with the idea of the duel, the doctor comes to reason with his faults and his future and in the face of death, resolves his life and what he should do.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is without a doubt the greatest short-story writer of all time. Stories, like the "Student", are forever to be remembered and cherished.

Discover in this book some of the exceptional early stories of the Russian writer.

The basic plot line is simple and repeats itself in almost every single story, but each time the character development is unique and interesting. The characters seem very real and I often feel like I am reading about people I know. I find these short stories to be very captivating and I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates a change from the usual long novel.

Instead of Luc Tuymans, Anton Chekhov, Vratislav Effenberger, Milton Hatoum, Andrie Platonov, Victor Pelevin, Rebecca Solnit, I found in this issue of Grand Street (no 64) contributions of David Mamet, Suzan Lori Parks, José Saramago, Tony Smith, Tennesse Williams and Pablo Neruda

Anton Chekov, no doubt; is one of the leading Russian Dramatist .He truly portarys the life without any philosophy or mystery but realistically... Uncle Vania depicts the aimlessness of Rural Life that how it devours the potentials of people:how it makes civilized,cultured and learned men frustrated and sick of their relations as well as of their surroundings.Life in country side is rotten and decayed but how people handle it?What are their hopes?how do they kill the time ?well, read the book and find out !

Pity that this title is out of print. Of all the translations of Chekhov I've seen or worked with, Corrigan's are easily the most accessible for American actors. They are thankfully devoid of the "stiffness" that is part and parcel of most standard translations, and the easy flow of Corrigan's dialogue enables actors to get to the heart of the characters with far less effort.

Tchekov's unknown works are no more hidden.
Astonishing although non-regular...

I was disappointed in Microsoft Reader's inability to print. I like the concept of near instant availability for e-books, but prefer to read from the printed page instead of staring at a computer screen. Funny, too, how I found out I couldn't print my document until after I had purchased this e-book and installed the Microsoft Reader software (with the additional step of having to "activate" a pc for it). In fact, Microsoft Reader's Help section doesn't make mention of the fact that one can't print its documents. A search in the help topics only produces the result that the word "print" can't be found.

I'll avoid the Microsoft Reader e-book format in the future.

Really Really boring, don't think anyone should waste their time reading this garbage. Horrible!

I have read many versions of Uncle Vanya, but this edition is an up-beat, funny, and, ultimately wonderful version of the excellent story by one of Russias beloved writers. I was looking for the right edition to use in my school for the school play, and this edition the kids could connect to. It dosen't have a lot of that Shakespere mumbo-jumbo that you have to read 50 times. This is accesible and very good. rock on David Mamet.

This is a heavily derivative work, a rehash of existing biographies. The author does not speak Russian and cannot, then, offer us any new or original insights into Chekhov's life and work.

To some extent, the act of writing a biography is inherently celebratory. But Callow's worshipful attitude towards his subject creates a bland, two-dimensional representation of the man. It reads less like scholarship than hero-worship (...).

Callow's appreciation of Chekov's genius and his praise for the artist are not unseemly, but the too-facile manner in which he deflects the many criticisms leveled against Chekov make us lose sight of the "other Chekov," the inglorious one, who is equally as important, if often less attractive, than the idealized man Callow presents.

In addition--and almost an afterthought in light of the failings described above--Callow's analyses of Chekov's work are often obtuse and, almost without exception, unoriginal.

My interest in Russian literature began 35 years ago with the discovery of a Russian writer whose work was so very different from Tolsoy, Turgenev, and Gogal,...Anton Chekhov. I own, and have read many times, four different author's views on the life of Antosha. Philip Callow's book gives so many new details about Chekhov, that one comes away with a new perspective into the personality of this magnificent writer. If you are enjoy reading Chekhov and about Chekhov, I heartally recommend this book!

Encourage by the previous reviewers, I was excited to purchase an entire collection of Anton Chekhov's stories. However, the printing and binding of the books were extremely poor quality. I was afraid that the books would fall apart before I finished reading them. In addition, lines of text were printed on a slope (rather than in the standard straight line!). If Dr. Sekirin is serious about publishing his works-- please get a professional printer, publisher for your books. I was so disgusted, disappointed and immediately returned the books.

Encourage by the previous reviewers, I was excited to purchase an entire collection of Anton Chekhov's stories. However, the printing and binding of the books were extremely poor quality. I was afraid that the books would fall apart before I finished reading them. In addition, lines of text were printed on a slope (rather than in the standard straight line!). If Dr. Sekirin is serious about publishing his works-- please get a professional printer, publisher for your books. I was so disgusted, disappointed and immediately returned the books.

Anton Chekhov's industry defies belief. He was a
devoted and insightful physician. He supported his
dishevelled family from an early age. He traversed
Russia to the remote penal colonies in Sakhalin and
composed a report which remains a classic of muted
anger and compassion. His own health was frail and
he died at 44, his lungs wasted. Yet during that absurdly curtailed, harried existence,
Chekhov produced a constellation of stories that have altered the
history of literature. These
comprise titles which are among the supreme
achievements in prose narrative and have been
reproduced in a host of languages. To use that tired
banality, they are 'world classics'. Chekhov's genius coincided with the macabre
absurdities of a dying Tsarist empire. If he began in
the tragi-comic dispensation of Gogol, he died,
clairvoyantly, on the eve of the crises of 1905 and of
the iron age, soon to come, of Marxist-Leninism. Time
and again, Chekhov's plays, Mozartian in their smiling
sadness, capture the transient but irrecusable hour
between the old order, with its loving frivolity, and the
storms which will cut down the cherry orchards. It is
Chekhov's equipoise which remains unique, his ability
to move us almost unbearably in respect of a lost past
while making us understand the inevitability, indeed
the justice, of the imminent cataclysm. A further circumstance was that of the flowering of
journals, magazines, newspaper feuilletons in late
nineteenth-century Russia. Countless titles sprang up
like the mushrooms in Chekhov's cherished woods.
The appetite for sketches, anecdotes, prose
caricature was voracious. It fostered the techniques of
a distinctive tribe: that of Maupassant, O. Henry, Mark
Twain and, above all, Chekhov. The train was one of
feverish productivity, of that graphic incisiveness of
outline and incident which made of those decades the
brilliant age of the cartoon, of the illustrated serial. The
line between reportage and fiction, between social
satire and sentimental snapshots, was blurring. Needy
scribblers were remunerated by the word. It has long been known that much of Chekhov remains
untranslated and, indeed, uncollected. They
tell of a provincial world even when they transpire in a
large city; of loveless betrothals and wretched
marriages; of enraged cats and the fogged-in
landscape of vodka; of petty bureaucrats and petty
fraudsters. Trains rattle the drunk and the sober over
nocturnal emptiness. A man is saved from drowning
only to be shaken to death by a derisive crowd.
Would-be lovers belch or hiccup at decisive moments.
Beatings are followed by grotesquely litigious
demands for compensation. Two elements stand out. There is in these miniatures
an arresting potion of cruelty. This can take the form of
physical assault, of lacerating accidents. More subtly,
there is the unctuous sadism of money and of social
rank. Young women are simply sold off to rheumy,
ageing bidders. Alcoholics are mocked and
tormented when they cannot scrounge the kopek
needed for their next drink. The other trait concerns the often wretched condition
of women. Monied widowhood is their only nirvana.
Do these little texts deserve translation and
publication in this somewhat stately format? There are
flashes of true humour and chimes of pathos. A
masterly eye is gaining confidence in its economy of
observation. And even an ephemeral Chekhov is,
after all, Chekhov. None the less...