Overdoing It

Anton Chekhov

2017年1月 · Interactive Media · 讲述者：Max Bollinger

关于此有声读物

Overdoing It by Anton Chekhov is a short story about a land surveyor who hires a peasant cart driver to take him to the estate he has been summoned to survey. The journey is long and tortuous, and the surveyor is jolted and marvelled at the capacity of the Russian drivers for combining a slow pace with a jolting that turns the soul inside out. The surveyor is worried about the danger of the journey, but the driver, Klim, reassures him that there are no robbers on the road. The surveyor even lies to Klim that he has three revolvers to protect himself. The journey becomes even more suspicious when the cart suddenly turns to the left, leaving the surveyor to wonder where Klim is taking him to. Read in English, unabridged.

作者简介

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.