In the Ravine, and other short stories

Anton Chekhov

júl. 2002 · Naxos AudioBooks · Lesari: Kenneth Branagh

Um þessa hljóðbók

Here are twelve short stories by Anton Chekhov, one of the finest masters of what is acknowledged to be a difficult genre. There is the richly comic Oh! The Public, about a hassled ticket inspector, a wry look at morals and manners in The Chorus Girl, and the melancholic tale of a cab driver in Misery. Perhaps the finest of all is the novella In The Ravine, a minutely observed look at life in a village through the eyes of one family. All the characters come to life with their foibles, their strengths and their hopes. Kenneth Branagh uses his natural talent for characterisation to bring this village to life.

Um höfundinn

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the provincial town of Taganrog, Ukraine, in 1860. In the mid-1880s, Chekhov became a physician, and shortly thereafter he began to write short stories. Chekhov started writing plays a few years later, mainly short comic sketches he called vaudvilles. The first collection of his humorous writings, Motley Stories, appeared in 1886, and his first play, Ivanov, was produced in Moscow the next year. In 1896, the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg performed his first full- length drama, The Seagull. Some of Chekhov's most successful plays include The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters. Chekhov brought believable but complex personalizations to his characters, while exploring the conflict between the landed gentry and the oppressed peasant classes. Chekhov voiced a need for serious, even revolutionary, action, and the social stresses he described prefigured the Communist Revolution in Russia by twenty years. He is considered one of Russia's greatest playwrights. Chekhov contracted tuberculosis in 1884, and was certain he would die an early death. In 1901, he married Olga Knipper, an actress who had played leading roles in several of his plays. Chekhov died in 1904, spending his final years in Yalta.