Chekhov: Lady with the Dog

Chekhov’s Dama s sobachkoy (1899) is perhaps the most celebrated example of his shorter prose and one of the most famous stories in Russian literature. The tale of an adulterous liaison, set in Yalta, it shows to greatest effect Chekhov’s propensity for the conjuring of mood and atmosphere. The tale’s modernity is displayed too in its anticlimactic conclusion of poignant open-endedness: ‘ …and it was clear to both that the end was still far, far off and that the most complicated and difficult part was only beginning.’