Fifty-Two Stories

ALSO TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND ARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita

Anton Chekhov

The Complete Short Novels of Anton Chekhov

Selected Stories

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Adolescent

The Brothers Karamazov

Crime and Punishment

Demons

The Double and The Gambler

The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

The Idiot

Notes from a Dead House

Notes from Underground

Nikolai Gogol

The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

Dead Souls

Nikolai Leskov

The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Boris Pasternak

Doctor Zhivago

Alexander Pushkin

Novels, Tales, Journeys

Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

War and Peace

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2020 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Preface copyright © 2020 by Richard Pevear

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904, author. | Pevear, Richard, [date] translator. | Volokhonsky, Larissa, translator.

Title: Fifty-two stories (1883–1898) / Anton Chekhov ; a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

Description: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2020] | Translated from the Russian.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019022613 (print) | LCCN 2019022614 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525520818 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525520825 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904—Translations into English.

Classification: LCC PG3456.A13 P484 2020 (print) | LCC PG3456.A13 (ebook) | DDC 891.73/3—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022613

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022614

Ebook ISBN 9780525520825

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by John Gall

ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

CONTENTS

Cover

Also Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

J

OY

F

AT

AND

S

KINNY

A

T

THE

P

OST

O

FFICE

R

EADING

T

HE

C

OOK

G

ETS

M

ARRIED

I

N A

F

OREIGN

L

AND

C

ORPORAL

W

HOMPOV

G

RIEF

T

HE

E

XCLAMATION

P

OINT

A

N

E

DUCATED

B

LOCKHEAD

A S

LIP

-U

P

A

NGUISH

A C

OMMOTION

T

HE

W

ITCH

A L

ITTLE

J

OKE

A

GAFYA

S

PRING

A N

IGHTMARE

G

RISHA

L

ADIES

R

OMANCE

WITH A

D

OUBLE

B

ASS

T

HE

C

HORUS

G

IRL

T

HE

F

IRST

-C

LASS

P

ASSENGER

D

IFFICULT

P

EOPLE

O

N

THE

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OAD

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HE

B

EGGAR

E

NEMIES

T

HE

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ETTER

V

OLODYA

L

UCK

T

HE

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IREN

T

HE

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HEPHERD’S

P

IPE

C

OSTLY

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ESSONS

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HE

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ISS

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OYS

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ASHTANKA

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N

AME-

D

AY

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ARTY

A B

REAKDOWN

T

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B

ET

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HE

P

RINCESS

A

FTER

THE

T

HEATER

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ISTORY

OF A

B

USINESS

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NTERPRISE

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EIGHBORS

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EAR

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IG

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OLODYA

AND

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ITTLE

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OLODYA

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EACHER

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ITERATURE

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OUNTRY

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ECHENEG

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THE

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ART

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BOUT

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OVE

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ONYCH

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Notes

A Note About the Author

PREFACE

Our intention in making this collection has been to represent the extraordinary variety of Chekhov’s stories, from earliest to latest, in terms of characters, events, social classes, settings, voicing, and formal inventiveness. By chance the selection came to fifty-two stories—a full deck! But, as Chekhov once wrote, “in art, as in life, there is nothing accidental.”

When Chekhov began to write humorous stories and sketches, he thought he was doing it simply for money. And so he was. His father’s grocery business, in their native Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov, had gone bankrupt in 1876, and to avoid debtor’s prison the family had fled to Moscow, where Chekhov’s two older brothers were already studying at the university. Chekhov, who was sixteen at the time, stayed behind to finish high school, supporting himself in various ways, one of them being the publication of humorous sketches in local papers, signed with various pseudonyms. In 1879 he graduated and moved to Moscow himself, where he entered medical school, and where his writing, still pseudonymous, became virtually the sole support of the family—mother, father, four brothers, and a sister.