Complete Short Novels, The by Anton Chekhov, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky (Translators); 2005. Softcover.

Anton Chekhov, known for his short stories, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels–here brought together in one volume for the first time, in a new translation by the 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.