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Peasants and Other Stories (New York Review Books Classics)
Peasants and Other Stories - New York Review Books Classics Author:Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Edmund Wilson Chekhov is one of the very greatest practit ioners of the short story, and this pathbreaking selection, made by the great Americ an critic Edmund Wilson, represents some of his finest, most adventurous achievement s in the genre. Wilson has gathered the major stories of Chekhov's last years--when he was also engaged in writing his theatrical mas... more »terpieces Three Sisters and The Che rry Orchard--and placed them in chronological order, allowing us to see the dying wr iter's deepening concern over Russia's tormented national life. Chekhov shows us the anxious social jockeying of the new industrial rich, the small-minded c onservatism of the business class, the intelligentsia's faltering search for politic al and emotional commitment, the murderous inclinations of religious fundamentalists , the brutalization and enduring humanity of a desperately impoverished peasantry. T hese compassionate, humorous, and unsparing stories constitute an extraordinary, ind eed prophetic vision of a society~ reeling on the verge of collapse.~« less