The Restless Classics edition of Chekhov: Stories for Our Time
presents a must-have collection by the great Russian author who captured
humanity in all its complexity, and reintroduces Chekhov as a funny,
playful, deeply human, and thoroughly modern writer.
The great 19th-century Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov wrote
nearly one thousand stories, a body of work that is unmatched in its
alchemy of sensitivity, wisdom, precision, verve, soulfulness, and
economy. Chekhov's sensibility was radically human and thoroughly
modern: write not how you think things should be, but rather as they
are. Universally recognized as one of the greatest short story writers
of all time, he revolutionized the form and had a profound influence on
his successors from Flannery O'Connor to Alice Munro.
As the celebrated Russian-immigrant author Boris Fishman writes in his
bold, incisive, and delightfully counterintuitive introduction to this
Restless Classics collection, Chekhov is funny, optimistic, ceaselessly
curious, and undogmatic--a significant break from the bleak and morally
rigid tradition of his contemporaries Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Unlike
those peers born to privilege, Chekhov was raised in the peasantry and
worked as a doctor. In his writing, he portrays the complexity of human
beings as changeable and contingent, neither saints nor sinners--an
approach intimately linked with his work as a clinician and
humanitarian.
Chekhov's humanity, just as much as his mastery of the writing craft, is
potent medicine in times that seem so divided by ideology and antipathy
for groups seen as "other." The first new selection of his work in over
a decade, the Restless Classics edition of Chekhov: Stories for Our
Time pairs beloved favorites with lesser known gems, all stunningly
illustrated by Matt McCann: a perfect introduction for novices and a
must-have for Chekhov devotees.
