Publisher's Synopsis
Anton Checkhov's The Witch and other stories is one of his many collection of short stories. Included in this book are fifteen of Chekhov's; The Witch, Peasant Wives, The Post, The New Villa, Dreams, The Pipe, Agafya, At Christmas Time, Gusev, The Student, In the Ravine, The Huntsman, Happiness, A Malefactor, Peasants. 'Through the monotonous roar of the storm he caught a scarcely audible thin and jingling monotone like the shrill note of a gnat when it wants to settle on one's cheek and is angry at being prevented.' Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramaturge and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
