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ANTON CHEKHOV (1860–1904), the son of a grocer and a former serf, worked as a physician and ran an open clinic for the poor, while also writing the plays and short stories that have established him as one of the greatest figures in Russian literature.

MARIA BLOSHTEYN is a translator and scholar of Russian and American literature. She lives in Toronto.

NIKOLAY CHEKHOV (1858–1889), older brother of Anton, studied art at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His drawings frequently accompanied his brother’s early published stories. Although considered the most promising of the three Chekhov brothers in his youth, Nikolay’s alcoholism and habit of sleeping in the streets precipitated his death from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-one.

THE PRANK

The Best of Young Chekhov

ANTON CHEKHOV

Translated from the Russian and with an introduction by

MARIA BLOSHTEYN

Illustrated by

NIKOLAY CHEKHOV

NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

New York

THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

Copyright © 2015 by NYREV, Inc.

Translation, introduction, and notes copyright © 2015 by Maria Bloshteyn

All rights reserved.

The publisher would like to thank Peter B. Kaufman for his assistance in the preparation of this volume.

Cover illustration: Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Herring, 1918, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg/Bridgeman Images

Cover design: Katy Homans

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904, author.

[Short stories. Selections. English. (Bloshteyn)]

The prank : the best of young Chekhov / by Anton Chekhov ; illustrated by Nikolay Chekhov ; translation and introduction by Maria Bloshteyn.

pages : illustrations ; cm. — (New York Review Books classics)

ISBN 978-1-59017-836-2 (alk. paper)

I.

Bloshteyn, Maria R. , 1971– translator. II. Chekhov, Nikolai, 1858–1889,

illustrator. III. Title. IV. Series: New York Review Books classics.

PG3456. A13B58 2015

891. 73'3—dc23

2014046121

ISBN 978-1-59017-837-9

v1. 0

Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

CONTENTS

Introduction

A Note on the Translation

Artists’ Wives

Papa

St. Peter’s Day

Chase Two Rabbits, Catch None

A Confession, or, Olya, Zhenya, Zoya

A Sinner from Toledo

The Temperaments

Flying Islands by Jules Verne

Before the Wedding

A Letter to a Learned Neighbor

In the Train Car

1,001 Passions, or, A Dreadful Night

Notes

INTRODUCTION

CHEKHOV assembled the stories in The Prank in 1882. He was twenty-two years old and hoped the book would launch him on a literary career. As it happened, it didn’t come out that year or during his lifetime. It appears here, more than 130 years later, for the first time, and in English translation to boot. Chekhov, who declared that he would be read for at most a year after his death and who told a translator that his works could be of no possible interest to the English-reading public,1 would surely have been pleasantly surprised.