Anton Chekhov

Includes a new forward by the screenwriter Mary Bing In Anton Chekhov?s The Duel the escalating animosity between two men with opposed philosophies of life is played out against the backdrop of a seedy resort on the Black Sea coast. Laevsky is a dissipated romantic given to gambling and flirtation; he has run off with another man?s wife, the beautiful but vapid Nadya, and now finds himself tiring of her. The scientist von Koren is contemptuous...

A civil servant realises that he has never used an exclamation mark in his career. This leads him into a paranoid fantasy in which everyday objects become exclamation marks. Written when Chekhov was on the verge of becoming a literary celebrity, this selection reveals the author's often neglected comic talents.