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Zusatztext Praise for previous translations by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky: “The reinventors of the classic Russian novel for our times.” —PEN/BoMC Translation Prize Citation “Their translations have become the standard English-language texts.” —Newsday The Brothers Karamazov: “One finally gets the musical whole of Dostoevksy’s original.” —The New York Times Book Review Anna Karenina: “ The most scrupulous! illuminating and compelling version yet.” —The Oregonian Informationen zum Autor Anton Chekhov was the author of hundreds of short stories and several plays and is regarded by many as both the greatest Russian storyteller and the father of modern drama. Klappentext Anton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels-here brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.The Steppe-the most lyrical of the five-is an account of a nine-year-old boy's frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figures-a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility-on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals. In The Story of an Unknown Man, a political radical spying on an important official by serving as valet to his son gradually discovers that his own terminal illness has changed his long-held priorities in startling ways. Three Years recounts a complex series of ironies in the personal life of a rich but passive Moscow merchant. In My Life, a man renounces wealth and social position for a life of manual labor.The resulting conflict between the moral simplicity of his ideals and the complex realities of human nature culminates in a brief apocalyptic vision that is unique in Chekhov's work. THE STEPPE The Story of a Journey I On an early July morning a battered, springless britzka--one of those antediluvian britzkas now driven in Russia only by merchants' agents, herdsmen, and poor priests--rolled out of the district town of N., in Z----province, and went thundering down the post road. It rattled and shrieked at the slightest movement, glumly seconded by the bucket tied to its rear--and from these sounds alone, and the pitiful leather tatters hanging from its shabby body, one could tell how decrepit it was and ready for the scrap heap. In the britzka sat two residents of N.: the merchant Ivan Ivanych Kuzmichov, clean-shaven, in spectacles and a straw hat, looking more like an official than a merchant; and the other, Father Khristofor Siriysky, rector of the church of St. Nicholas in N., a small, long-haired old man in a gray canvas caftan, a broad-brimmed top hat, and a colorfully embroidered belt. The first was thinking intently about something and kept tossing his head to drive away drowsiness; on his face a habitual, businesslike dryness struggled with the good cheer of a man who has just bid farewell to his family and had a stiff drink; the second gazed at God's world with moist, astonished little eyes and smiled so broadly that his smile even seemed to reach his hat brim; his face was red and had a chilled look. Both of them, Father Khristofor as well as Kuzmichov, were on their way now to sell wool. Taking leave of their households, they had just had a filling snack of doughnuts with sour cream and, despite the early hour, had drunk a little . . . They were both in excellent spirits. Besides the two men just described and the coachman Deniska, who tirelessly whipped up the pair of frisky bay horses, there was one more passenger in the britzka--a boy of about nine whose face was dark with tan and stained with tears. This was Egorush...
