Peasants and Other Stories - New York Review Books Classics | Literary Fiction Collection for Book Clubs & Reading Enthusiasts

Some of the most pungent of Chekhov's stories are included here, including "The Murder", "In the Ravine", and "The Bishop". The version of "Peasants" is not the Constance Garnett translation but one by Edmund Wilson; I prefer the Garnett. "The Murder" is one of the most profound stories one can ever read, of two brothers who quarrel endlessly about whose religious practice is the truest and closest to the Church; neither of which is actually anywhere near the teachings of Christ. This idiotic battle leads to the murder of one of the brothers; in typical Russian fashion the perpetrators try to hide the crime, foolishly leaving clues to what really happened everywhere. All are sentenced to exile, and the brother who actually commits the killing ends up on the prison fortress of Sakhalin Island for trying to escape. In the last, thunderous scene he is seen shackled to other prisoners who work in a coal mine, hauled out of bed to provide coal for a steamer; but the seas are too rough to load the coal, the steamer's lights fade, and the convict reflects that in that place of true horrors he has finally figured out true religion.Chekhov spent perhaps a year traveling on Sakhalin and wrote an exhaustive expose of the uselessness of the penal colony in terms of the purported aim of reforming prisoners. Instead, the convicts become so inured to the dull routine of hideous weather and slights from petty functionaries (the women are almost all driven to prostitution just to survive) that even the most minor sentence becomes a life-long one. Instead of rehabilitation, Sakhalin grinds its humans to dirt."In the Ravine" is a priceless examination of the varieties of human personality, and how the strong oppress the weak. Even the murder of a baby, for the sake of an inheritance, can be got away with if the murderer has enough gall.