This unique collection offers a perfect introduction to one of Russia's - and the world's - greatest writers.

Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. He trained as a doctor and practiced medicine throughout most of his literary career.

Constance Garnett was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature and one of the first English translators of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov.

Janet Malcolm is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of The Journalist and the Murder and In the Freud Archives, among many others.