(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Aanton 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.

“Spectacular…This new Vanya has a conversational smoothness that removes the cobwebs sticking to those other translations that never let you forget that the play was written in 1897… One of the most exquisite renderings of Uncle Vanya I’ve encountered.” —Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

“Quietly arresting… A canny and colloquial world-premiere translation… A beautifully rewarding exploration of stunted lives still bending toward the meager sunlight, like wildflowers sprouting from a cracked sidewalk.” —James Hebert, San Diego Union-Tribune

As the sixth play in the TCG Classic Russian Drama Series, Richard Nelson and preeminent translators of Russian literature, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, continue their collaboration with Chekhov’s most intimate play.

Other titles in this series include:

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

The Inspector by Nikolai Gogol

Molière, or The Cabal of Hypocrites and Don Quixote by Mikhail Bulgakov

A Month in the Country by Ivan Turgenev

The Seagull by Anton Chekhov

Fifty-two stories spanning Chekhov’s career.