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Description of  The Complete Short Novels

140003292X PDF [\u0414\u0443\u044d\u043b\u044c](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL9120857W)\r\n[\u041c\u043e\u044f \u0436\u0438\u0437\u043d\u044c](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL9120843W)\r\n\u0420\u0430\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0430\u0437 \u043d\u0435\u0438\u0437\u0432\u0435\u0441\u0442\u043d\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0447\u0435\u043b\u043e\u0432\u0435\u043a\u0430\r\n[\u0421\u0442\u0435\u043f\u044c](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL55442W)\r\n[\u0422\u0440\u0438 \u0433\u043e\u0434\u0430](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL55474W)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.