Small Fry and Other Stories

Universally acclaimed as the master of the short-story form, Anton Chekhov began his literary career as the author of brief tales and vignettes of Russian life when he was still a young medical student. Later rejected by the writer in the same self-effacing way in which he repudiated some of his most celebrated works, the stories in this collection not only testify to the early promise of his genius, but deserve to be appreciated for their lapidary vividness and their intrinsic stylistic quality.