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The Prank
  • Published: 15 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9781590178362
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $45.00

The Prank

The Best of Young Chekhov

Formats & editions
Paperback
15 Aug 2015
EBook
28 July 2015
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Available for the first time in English, this original collection of stories by the great Anton Chekhov, selected and arranged by the author himself, was suppressed by Russian censors when first assembled and never published. A Prank is thus a momentous discovery and a milestone publication for all lovers of literature.

Twelve early comedic short stories by the Russian master of the form.

An NYRB Classics Original

The Prank is Chekhov’s own selection of the best of his early work, the first book he put together and the first book he hoped to publish. Assembled in 1882, with illustrations by Nikolay Chekhov, the book was then presented to the censor for approval—which was denied. Now, more than a hundred and thirty years later, The Prank appears here for the first time in any language.

At the start of his twenties, when he was still in medical school, Anton Chekhov was also busily setting himself up as a prolific and popular writer. Appearing in a wide range of periodicals, his shrewd, stinging, funny stories and sketches turned a mocking eye on the mating rituals and money-grubbing habits of the middle classes, the pretensions of aspiring artists and writers, bureaucratic corruption, drunken clowning, provincial ignorance, petty cruelty—on Russian life, in short. Chekhov was already developing his distinctive ear for spoken language, its opacities and evasions, the clichés we shelter behind and the clichés that betray us. The lively stories in The Prank feature both the themes and the characteristic tone that make Chekhov among the most influential and beloved of modern writers.
  • Published: 15 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9781590178362
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $45.00
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About the author

Anton Chekhov

ANTON CHEKHOV (1860–1904) is regarded as one of the world’s masters of the short story. The son of a hapless shopkeeper and grandson of a former serf, Chekhov began at the age of twenty to support his family through the publication of magazine pieces. The writing of these short works—many of which were collected in English for the first time in Seven Stories’ Undiscovered Chekhov and Little Apples—served as the author’s apprenticeship in literature, which was undertaken simultaneously with his studies to become a doctor. Both of these educations would leave their mark on the rising author. By the 1890s Chekhov had moved on to weightier journals, and he had drifted away from the practice of medicine; but his work would always be characterized by the copywriter’s vividness and the sober exactitude of a scientist. In an age of literary aristocrats, Chekhov did as much as any modern writer to democratize the profession. He used his talent to examine the lives of street urchins, déclassé provincials and frustrated reformers. By the time of his death from tuberculosis in 1904, all Russia and much of the world had taken heed of his credo: “For chemists there is nothing unclean on the earth. The writer must be as objective as the chemist.”
portrait photo of Anton Chekhov

Also by Anton Chekhov

Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov
About Love
Anton Chekhov: 6 Full-Cast BBC Radio Productions
Fifty-Two Stories
Kashtanka
Little Apples
A Nervous Breakdown
See all

Praise for The Prank

Praise for Anton Chekhov:

"Chekhov's stories are as wonderful (and necessary) now as when they first appeared...It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote--for few, if any, writers have ever done more--it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish." --Raymond Carver

"As readers of imaginative literature, we are always seeking clues, warnings...Where in life to search more assiduously; what not to overlook; what's the origin of this sort of human calamity, that sort of joy and pleasure: how can we live nearer to the latter, further off from the former? And to such seekers as we are, Chekhov is a guide, perhaps the guide." --Richard Ford

"[Chekhov's characters] are not lit by the hard light of common day but suffused in a mysterious grayness. They move in this as though they were disembodied spirits. It is their souls that you seem to see...You have the feeling of a vast, gray, lost throng wandering aimless in some dim underworld." --Somerset Maugham

"We have to cast about in order to discover where the emphasis in these strange stories rightly comes...The soul is ill; the soul is cured; the soul is not cured." --Virginia Woolf

"Read Chekhov, read the stories straight through." --Francine Prose

"Reading his stories keeps us honest, and humble, but somehow also lighthearted." --Sonya Chung

"What writers influenced me as a young man? Chekhov! As a dramatist? Chekhov! As a story writer? Chekhov!" --Tennessee Williams

"Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me." --Eudora Welty