Three Sisters (Unabridged)

Anton Chekov

Jan 2005 · Milkyway Media · AI-narrated by Marcus (from Google)

About this audiobook

Please note: This audiobook has been created using AI voice.

The sisters Olga, Masha, and Irina live with their brother Andrey in a provincial Russian town, and plan to return to Moscow, where they grew up, as soon as they’re able. Olga doesn’t want to continue working at the school where she’s a teacher and occasional headmaster; Masha is disillusioned in her marriage; Irina hopes to find her true love; and Andrey shows promise of becoming a professor. Also stationed in their town is a battery of soldiers that provide them with a social life. When Andrey falls in love with Natasha, their hopes for change are dashed, bit by bit.

First performed in 1901 at the Moscow Art Theatre, Three Sisters is considered one of Chekhov’s best plays. While critical reception at the time was mixed, the show was popular enough to become a part of the company’s repertoire, and is still commonly staged and adapted today.

About the author

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.