Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...

Aging actress Irina visits the country estate where her brother Sorin and her son Konstantin reside. She brings her lover Boris, a successful novelist. The estate teems with desire, jealousy and angst. The estate manager's daughter Masha is in love with Konstantin, who is in love with the sweet neighbor Nina, who is in love with Boris. Boris casually uses and discards Nina while Irina continuously treats Konstantin with similar disdain. Emotions run...

"This collection, selected by Shelby Foote, presents seventy of Chekhov's early short stories, written between 1883 and 1888, in celebrated translations by Constance Garnett. One of the most memorable is "The Death of a Government Clerk," a glorious parody in which a fawning official is undone by an ill-timed sneeze. "On the Road," the history of an educated man's search for convictions, is one of Chekhov's finest dramatic stories and the source of...