A Snack before I Die

James Wood

  • Anton Chekhov: A Life by Donald Rayfield
    HarperCollins, 674 pp, £25.00, June 1997, ISBN 0 00 255503 4

We can get a better understanding of Chekhov and his work from the notebook he kept than from any biography – even an important biography, like this one. It is a ledger of enigmas in which nothing adds up, full of strange squints, comic observations and promptings for new stories.

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Vol. 19 No. 16 · 21 August 1997 » James Wood » A Snack before I Die (print version)
pages 19-21 | 4414 words