Böcker av Anton Chekhov

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.

"Senelick's accomplishment is astounding."-Library Journal

"Senelick's accomplishment is astounding."-Library Journal

Only a year ago, the landowner Nikolai Ivanov was full of energy and optimism, in love with his wife and working hard. Now, for no reason he can understand, Ivanov is overcome with inertia and self-disgust. His wife is dying and he feels nothing. He is drowning in debt and despair, and he does nothing. Is it him? Is it Russia? And is the possibility of happiness with the young woman who loves him just a cruel illusion? Ivanov was the 27-year-old Chekhov's shot at despatching the 'superfluous man' of Russian literature, and in surrounding him with a brilliantly drawn set of provincial types he created some of the best comedy he was ever to write.

Taken from The Oxford Chekhov, the stories in this collection include "The Butterfly," "Ariadne," "A Dreary Story," "Neighbours," "An Anonymous Story," and "Doctor Startsev," as well as the title story.

Hear what I have to say about the cherry orchard, because it is mine. I say bring it down, tear it down. Smash it down and tear it down. Watch, watch. Just you watch. I will build holiday villas, as far as the eye can see. I will build a place for everyone to come and enjoy. For the future. And this will be the future. A new life. A new way of life. Here! Come now and play. Play. Play! Get the band to play.Ranyevskaya returns more or less bankrupt after ten years abroad. Luxuriating in her fading moneyed world and regardless of the increasingly hostile forces outside, she and her brother snub the lucrative scheme of Lopakhin, a peasant turned entrepreneur, to save the family estate. In so doing, they put up their lives to auction and seal the fate of the beloved orchard. Set at the very start of the twentieth century, The Cherry Orchard captures a poignant moment in Russia's history as the country rolls inexorably towards 1917. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov in a version by Andrew Upton, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in May 2011.

"The most complete collection of the Russian playwright's repertoire."-Vogue

Chekhov's worldwide reputation as a dramatist rests on five great plays: Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. All are presented in this collection, taken from the authoritative Oxford Chekhov, in Ronald Hingley's acclaimed translation. Hingley has also written an introduction specifically for this volume in which he provides a detailed history of Chekhov's involvement in the theater and an assessment of his accomplishment as a dramatist.

The importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written, and this superb new translation captures their modernist spirit. Among the fourteen stories included are 'The Lady with the Little Dog', 'Gusev', and 'Rothschild's Violin'.

- Idea for a story. A beautiful young girl lives by a lake all her life. She loves this lake. She's happy and free, like that bird was once. Then a man comes along and for no reason at all... what do you think he does?- He destroys her.A story about how we make stories, a story about unrequited love, The Seagull is one of the great plays of the modern era. Chekhov explores emotion and creativity with the clarity of a doctor and the heart of a poet.John Donnelly's version of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull premiered in a Headlong and The Nuffield, Southampton co-production, in association with Derby Playhouse. The play opened in April 2013, followed by a UK tour.

In the final years of his life, Chekhov had reached the height of his powers as a dramatist, and also produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces. The poignant 'The Lady with the Little Dog' and 'About Love' examine the nature of love outside of marriage - its romantic idealism and the fear of disillusionment. And in stories such as 'Peasants', 'The House with the Mezzanine' and 'My Life' Chekhov paints a vivid picture of the conditions of the poor and of their powerlessness in the face of exploitation and hardship. With the works collected here, Chekhov moved away from the realism of his earlier tales - developing a broader range of characters and subject matter, while forging the spare minimalist style that would inspire such modern short-story writers as Hemingway and Faulkner.

At a time when the Russian theatre was dominated by formulaic melodramas and farces, Chekhov created a new sort of drama that laid bare the everyday lives, loves and yearnings of ordinary people. Ivanov depicts a man stifled by inactivity and lost idealism, and The Seagull contrasts a young man's selfish romanticism with the stoicism of a woman cruelly abandoned by her lover. With 'the scenes from country life' of Uncle Vanya, his first fully mature play, Chekhov developed his own unique dramatic world, neither tragedy nor comedy. In Three Sisters the Prozorov sisters endlessly dream of going to Moscow to escape the monotony of provincial life, while his comedy The Cherry Orchard portrays characters futilely clinging to the past as their land is sold from underneath them.

Including "The Duel," "Ward No. 6," "A Woman's Kingdom," "Three Years," "My Life," "Peasants," and "In the Ravine," as well as a biographical introduction and a chronology.

The first of Chekhov's works to be published in a serious literary journal, `The Steppe', with its masterly account of a spectacular thunderstorm, signifies his maturation as a writer of short stories. While the majority of his tales focus on the privileged classes, this selection shows that Chekhov never forgot his origins as the son of a failed provincial grocer, and characters as varied as the brutal soldier in `Gusev', the downtrodden old constable in `OnOfficial Business', and the bemused peasants in `New Villa' testify to the power and flexibility of his art.

Anton Chekhov revolutionized Russian theater through his inimitable portrayals of characters faced with complex moral dilemmas.

This collection of Chekhov's finest early writing reveals a young writer mastering the art of the short story. 'The Steppe', which established his reputation, is the unforgettable tale of a boy's journey to a new school in Kiev, travelling through majestic landscapes towards an unknown destiny. 'Gusev' depicts an ocean voyage, where the sea takes on a terrifying, primeval power; 'The Kiss' portrays a shy soldier's failed romantic encounter; and in 'The Duel' two men's enmity ends in farce. Haunting and highly atmospheric, all the stories in this volume show a writer emerging from the shadow of his masters - Tolstoy, Turgenev and Gogol - and discovering his own voice. They also illustrate Chekhov's genius for evoking the natural world and exploring inner lives.

A schoolteacher in a provincial town falls in love with and marries a young local woman. He thinks he's found a bliss only described in novels. But before long, his sharp points of bliss become blurred. The loss of ideals and poverty of actual experience are the themes of these stories. Chekhov's Russians, at the close of the 19th century are trapped in a prison of frustration, which he depicts with laconic power.

From the teenager in provincial Russia in 1875 to his premature death in Germany in 1904, the author wrote over 4,500 letters to a range of correspondents, including family and friends, his publisher and fellow writers - not to mention actresses. This book presents these letters which tell the story of the author's life as a man and a writer.

When a young woman dies during a shooting party at the country estate of a dissolute count, a magistrate is called upon to investigate. The mystery deepens and suspicion falls more widely as it emerges that the dead woman was at the centre of a tangled web of relationships: with her elderly husband, with the lecherous count, and with the magistrate himself...

Madame Ranevskya returns from Paris as the family estate, including her beloved cherry orchard, is about to be sold to pay for mounting debts. Revelling in past glories and their extravagant lifestyle, the family ignore all offers of help.

These stories from the middle period of Chekhov's career show him exploring complex, ambiguous and often extreme emotions. Influenced by his own experiences as a doctor, 'Ward No. 6', set in a mental hospital, is a savage indictment of the medical profession. 'The Black Monk', portraying an academic who has strange hallucinations, explores ideas of genius and insanity; in 'Murder', religious fervour leads to violence; while in 'The Student', Chekhov's favourite story, a young man recounts a tale from the gospels and undergoes a spiritual epiphany. In all the stories collected here, Chekhov's characters face madness, alienation and frustration before they experience brief, ephemeral moments of insight, often earned at great cost, where they confront the reality of their existence.

Chekhov's widely performed classic study of provincial life explores the irony of hope and the inadequacy of consolation.

Two years after its disastrous opening in 1896, "The Seagull" was successfully revived at the Moscow Art Theatre. Checkhov's self-mocking description of the play was: "A comedy - 3F, 6M, four acts, rural scenery (a view over a lake); much talk of literature, little action, five bushels of love".

The NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes. The translations, by leading experts in the field, are accurate and above all actable. The editions of English-language plays include a glossary of unusual words and phrases to aid understanding. This Drama Classics edition of Anton Chekhov's early tragedy of the disruptive presence of a glamorous actress and her lover is translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine.

Part of "Drama Classics" series, this title presents a translation of Anton Chekhov's play.

A masterpiece of Russian drama, now in a student edition

Chekhov's first full-length play anticipates the explosive revolutionary atmosphere of Russia at the turn of the century. This edition has been translated to English by David Harrower.