Why this book

Chekhov reshaped the short story for the whole world — no melodrama, no tidy morals, just ordinary people glimpsed at the exact moment their old life quietly stops making sense to them.

The Story

In Yalta for the season, Dmitri Gurov studies every new arrival out of habit, and when he spots a young woman walking a small white Pomeranian along the seafront, he invents a reason to strike up conversation with her.

Her name is Anna Sergeyevna, married young to a man she barely respects, and lonely enough that their idle flirtation deepens fast — long walks by the sea give way to secret hours together, until what neither intended becomes an affair neither can stop.

Gurov has had many such flings before and expected to feel nothing new this time, yet something in Anna's quiet trust moves him, and for once an affair feels less like conquest and more like real tenderness.

Afterward Anna weeps bitterly, calling herself a wicked, fallen woman who has betrayed her husband and herself, so ashamed she can hardly meet Gurov's eyes, while he watches her grief with a detachment that quietly surprises even him.

A letter arrives: her husband's eyes are troubling him and he wants her home, so Anna packs in a hurry and leaves for S----, promising nothing definite, while Gurov sees her off at the station, half-believing the whole affair is already over.

Back in Moscow, though, he cannot forget her; her face intrudes on his marriage, his card games, his idle evenings, until the longing grows unbearable, so he lies to his wife about business and travels to S---- simply to find her again.

He tracks her to the local theatre and finds her in the crowded aisle; when their eyes meet she is stricken with fear and joy at once, so they slip away together that same night, unable to pretend indifference any longer.

From then on Anna begins traveling to Moscow every few months, telling her husband she needs to see a doctor there, and in a quiet hotel room the two finally admit out loud that what they feel is real, deep, and far too complicated to end.

Neither one leaves their marriage, and neither can stay away; they meet in secret whenever her doctor's excuse allows, caught between two separate lives, and as Chekhov wrote, 'the most complicated and difficult part was only just beginning.'

This same volume gathers nine more Chekhov portraits of Russian life — doctors, governesses, scholars, servants, husbands and wives — each caught in a private longing or self-deceit, sketched in only a handful of unsparing pages before the old certainties crack.

Called to a factory owner's mansion, Doctor Korolyov examines the owner's daughter, Liza, sick less in body than in spirit, and when her tearful mother begs him to stay the night, he agrees, walking the grounds uneasy at the machines' ceaseless noise.

Liza confesses she feels trapped by the family's wealth and the misery it was built on, so Korolyov tells her plainly that she should leave it all behind, then rides off at dawn imagining a freer life still open to her.

Elsewhere, young governess Mashenka Pavletsky finds her room searched, because her employer suspects a stolen brooch, so Mashenka, insulted to her core, resolves to quit the house before anyone can accuse her outright.

As she packs to leave, the master of the house, Nikolay Sergeitch, confesses to her privately that he stole the brooch himself, sick with guilt he can no longer carry, but the confession changes nothing — Mashenka walks out anyway.

Doctor Startsev falls for Ekaterina Ivanovna, the Turkins' talented pianist daughter, and when she sends him a note for a midnight cemetery meeting as a prank, he waits there alone for hours, undeterred by the joke.

He proposes to her anyway, but she refuses him outright, choosing music and freedom over a doctor's quiet household, so Startsev nurses the wound in private and, when she soon leaves for Moscow, slowly lets himself forget her.

Years later, grown stout, wealthy, and cynical, Startsev feels nothing when she returns and shows renewed interest in him; he never calls on the Turkins again, settling instead into a solitary life measured only in money.

Exhausted scholar Kovrin rests at his old guardian's estate and grows close to the man's daughter, Tanya, but soon starts seeing a hallucination he calls the Black Monk, who whispers that Kovrin is chosen for some rare, private greatness.

Believing the vision harmless, even flattering, Kovrin marries Tanya and keeps up his long conversations with the phantom monk, so when Tanya catches him talking to an empty armchair, she realizes with horror that her husband is mad.

Treatment cures the hallucinations, but Kovrin returns to ordinary life feeling hollow and mediocre without them, growing so cold and withholding toward Tanya that their marriage quietly collapses under the weight of his indifference.

Years later, dying alone, Kovrin reads a bitter letter from Tanya blaming him for her father's death — and the Black Monk appears once more, whispering that he is still a genius, as Kovrin dies believing every word of it.

Shy seventeen-year-old Volodya, humiliated by exams and his frivolous mother, falls hard for their married cousin Nyuta, and when he blurts out his love and embraces her, he flees in shame — then convinces himself her startled laughter meant yes.

But he overhears Nyuta and his mother mocking his declaration together, and the humiliation is unbearable; after lashing out at his mother for her vanity and lies, Volodya finds a revolver in the house and shoots himself.

A former revolutionary takes a servant's post in official Georgy Orlov's household to spy on his father's politics, but the plan goes nowhere — Orlov is too idle and self-absorbed even to notice, let alone care.

Orlov keeps a mistress, Zinaida Fyodorovna, who has left her own husband for him and dreams of a real home together, but Orlov despises domesticity and grows crueler as her hopes grow, dismissing her wishes as silly sentimentality.

Orlov fakes a work trip just to escape her rather than admit the affair is over, and when the servant finally cannot bear the deception any longer, he confesses everything to Zinaida himself, breaking her heart completely.

Zinaida, pregnant now and utterly lost, chooses to leave with the servant instead — not as mistress and master's man anymore, but as equals starting over, first in Venice, then further along the coast, chasing a peace that keeps slipping away.

In Venice, for a while, both feel strangely lighter — the servant recovers from a fever under her care, and for the first time in months Zinaida seems almost at peace, free of Orlov's house and its small cruelties.

Worn down by grief and disillusionment, Zinaida despairs of ever being happy again and dies giving birth to her daughter, Sonya, whom the servant raises alone afterward out of love, refusing to let the child be forgotten or abandoned.

Years later, ill himself, he finally asks Orlov to provide for his own daughter's future; Orlov agrees with an idle shrug, arranging through a friend for Sonya to be placed quietly under a name that was never his own.

In one last sketch, a young officer's regimental ball leaves wife Anna Pavlovna dizzy with joy — until her jealous husband, Shalikov, hating the music, the officers, and her happiness all at once, drags her home, triumphant but strangely unsatisfied.

Across all ten lives, the pattern repeats: a private longing collides with duty, wealth, or pride, and the crack that opens rarely closes again — some drift back into routine, others break entirely under it.

What it means

Chekhov's people rarely get grand tragedies or clean endings; they get ordinary rooms, small lies, and the slow, quiet discovery that the life they settled for was never quite the one they actually wanted, told without a word of blame.

🎧 Read-along audio is being prepared — text-only for now.