Kirjahaku

Anton ChekhovThe Major Plays Ivanov * The Sea Gull * Uncle Vanya * The Three Sisters * The Cherry Orchard Let the things that happen onstage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life, Chekhov once declared. For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time, their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up. So it is that his plays express life through subtle construction, everyday dialogue, and an electrically charged atmosphere in which even the most casual words and actions assume great importance in his characters lives. This principle sets his plays apart from the rest, steering them clear of melodrama, and draws the audience into the lives of Chekhov s colorful characters. Because of his adherence to realism, the playwright has been called an incomparable artist of life. * What makes his work great is that it can be felt and understood not only by any Russian but by anybody in the world. *Leo Tolstoy With a Foreword by Robert Brusteinand an Afterword by Rosamund Bartlett"

Anton Chekhov remarked toward the close of his life that people would stop reading him a year after his death. But his literary stature and popularity have grown steadily with the years, and he is accounted the single most important influence on the development of the modern short story. Edited and with an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Portable Chekhov presents twenty-eight of Chekhov’s best stories, chosen as particularly representative of his many-sided portrayal of the human comedy—including “The Kiss,” “The Darling,” and “In the Ravine”—as well as two complete plays; The Boor, an example of Chekhov’s earlier dramatic work, and The Cherry Orchard, his last and finest play. In addition, this volume includes a selection of letters, candidly revealing of Chekhov’s impassioned convictions on life and art, his high aspirations, his marriage, and his omnipresent compassion.

Chekhov started writing about theatre - in newspaper articles and in his own letters - even before he began writing plays. Later he wrote in detail about these to his wife and leading actress Olga Knipper, and to the two directors of the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko. Collected here in Stephen Mulrine's vivid translations, these writings reveal Chekhov's many and varied insights into the way theatre works - and how best to realise his own intentions as a theatre writer.

This adaptation by David Hare premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London in 1997 starring Ralph Fiennes This is a drama of a Russian landowner's half-farcical, half serious personal crisis as he plummets fast into domestic and philosophical chaos. The central scene concerns a debate between the landowner and the young doctor about honesty. The latter thinks that honesty is to do with blurting out offensive truths, whilst the former insists that no-one can acquire honesty unless they have the self knowledge to examine their own motives. By turns despairing and passionate, this play offers an insight into a robust young writer, exploring themes that were to interest him in his later plays.

A new translation of the nineteenth-century Russian master's short classics includes The Steppe, The Duel, The Story of an Unknown Man, Three Years, and My Life. 15,000 first printing.

The first substantial volume in English devoted solely to the full range of Chekhov’s comic mastery—forty stories in all, employing a variety of techniques and twists, and all with a sense of fun and infectious good humor. Tolstoy, who disliked Chekhov’s plays, was reduced to helpless fits of laughter by his comic stories. Translated from the Russian and with an Introduction by Harvey Pitcher. “Penetrating social satire and trenchant character analysis....In story after story, Chekhov displays techniques—especially the use of a few telling details to suggest a whole—that he would later employ to stunning effect.”—Philip Gambone, New York Times Book Review.