Written during Chekhov's late twenties and early thirties, these stories are the work of a young writer in dialogue with his masters: Tolstoy, Gogol, and Furgenes. The stories-"The Steppe," "Panpipes," "The Kiss," "Verochka," "The Name-day Party," "A Dreary Story," "Gusev," and "The Duel"-deal with good and evil, depicting heroes, villains, and monsters with a lightness of touch and a lack of ambiguity that is largely absent from Chekhov's later work.

This Penguin Classics edition, with new translations of the stories by Ronald Wilks, includes an annotated bibliography, chronology, publishing histories, and explanatory notes. An introduction by internationally renowned Chekhov scholar Donald Rayfield provides a contemporary understanding of this masterful Russian writer.