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The Party and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

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The five stories of this volume are "The Party", " A Woman's Kingdom" "My Life: A Provincial Story" "An Unpleasant Business" and a "Nervous Breakdown".
In them Chekhov shows his sympathy and understanding for human nature under strain and in great life- difficulty. The opening story " The Party" focuses on a character in late - states of pregnancy who observes by mistake her philandering husband's talk with a young attractive girl. The long story " My Life" has many elements of Chekhov's own youth in it, including the cruel beatings administered by the father. In "The Woman's Kingdom" a former worker and now factory owner thinks of escaping her isolation through marrying one of the workers, only to understand how socially this has become impossible.
Characters imprisoned and frustrated in their own desperate world of feelings whose every minor gesture of the soul the master portrays with insight and elegance.