Chekhov

11 Stories

By: Anton Chekhov

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

With amazing insight, Anton Chekhov wrote of the lives of the Russian common man as well as the landowner. He established the style of the modern short story and influenced many great writers, including George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Mansfield, and Virginia Woolf.

Presented here are eleven of Chekhov's best works. In "The Black Monk", a man blissfully chats with the vision of a wise, mysterious monk, and in "The Kiss", an awkward young soldier is kissed by mistake. The remaining nine stories ("A Misfortune", "An Artist's Story", "Not Wanted", "Expensive Lessons", "The Head of the Family", "Mire", "Anyuta", "The Helpmate", and "The Trousseau") are equally enchanting.

(P)2004 In Audio

Critic reviews

"What's within is pure gold." (Library Journal)
"The clear, compelling narratives are master-pieces of literature." (Booklist)

Suble is the byword

The subtle and straigtforward writing of Checkov did much to influence American, English and Russian writers of the first half of the 20th century. His influence was in many ways comparable to that of Mark Twain and Turgenev in developing the then new realistic style. The style is simple. The subjects are plain, ordinary peasants. But somehow Chekov still manages to bring his characters to life and tell an interesting story. These 11 stories are excellent examples of his work. Good narration.

A nice selection but not the best narration.

This is a nice selection of stories my Chekhov. I got it mainly because it contains my favorite story of his - The Black Monk. Unfortunately the narration is not the best. The pacing is a bit jerky and his pronunciation of Russian words and propper names sometimes incorrect. It's not horrible, but it could have been done better and detracts from the overall value of the audio book...

Good if you like the Naturalist School

Sure the stories are plan and ordinary and YES Chekhov certainly knows how to word paint most excellently, but in the end I find the works empty; not as rich as works written from the Romantic school. After listening, it left me saying "what's the point"?

Poor production

Chekhov is great. The narration here is fairly good. But there are regular moments where there is no pause at all between sentences. It sounds as if there were audio clips spliced together without any thought of the final product. This lack of pause also occurs between the stories themselves. In addition, the stories aren't labelled .