My Life and Other Stories

Among the great nineteenth-century Russian writers, Chekhov was the one least interested in the political issues of his time, but it is fair to claim, nonetheless, that of them all he was, in his own extraordinary way, the most radical. His miraculous stories not only changed the face of the short story form, but have provided for the innumerable readers who have cherished his work an access to the quiet dramas of the soul, and a degree of human fellow-feeling never before offered by literature.