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    A Nervous Breakdown
    A Nervous Breakdown
    A Nervous Breakdown
    Audiobook59 minutes

    A Nervous Breakdown

    Written by Anton Chekhov

    Narrated by Dave Courvoisier

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Three friends, Mayer (a medical student), Rybnikov (a student of the arts), and Vassilyev (a law student), decide to go out one night to get some girls. Mayer and Rybnikov had to spend some time convincing Vassilyev to come along, as he was far more fastidious and cautious than his friends. Vassilyev himself is envious of his friends, who live their lives in a much more carefree fashion. The three friends visit several different houses containing the girls, but Vassilyev finds himself more eager to talk to the girls and treat them to fancy drinks than to pay his money to get something more. He tries to understand the lives the fallen women are living, but he grows more and more disgusted with them. Upon returning home, he continues to think about such depressing lives and the next day his friends come to see him and discover that he is the midst of a nervous breakdown.
    Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian writer and playwright, considered by many to be one of the best writers of short stories in the history of literature. Chekhov was also a successful physician, but writing was his true passion. He was quoted as saying "Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateDec 4, 2012
    ISBN9781469085951
    A Nervous Breakdown
    Author

    Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in Southern Russia and moved to Moscow to study medicine. Whilst at university he sold short stories and sketches to magazines to raise money to support his family. His success and acclaim grew as both a writer of fiction and of plays whilst he continued to practice medicine. Ill health forced him to move from his country estate near Moscow to Yalta where he wrote some of his most famous work, and it was there that he married actress Olga Knipper. He died from tuberculosis in 1904.

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    • 3/5
      This is my first experience of Chekhov, who's often cited as one of the greatest short-story writers, and I have to confess that the jury's out for now. This little book contains three stories, translated by Ronald Wilks: the eponymous A Nervous Breakdown, The Black Monk and Anna Round the Neck, and they are all rather grim. In the first, the law student Vasilyev is driven into a state of distraction after spending an evening with his friends trawling the brothels of Moscow. Sensitive Vasilyev is distressed by the vulgarity of these working women and the way that his educated friends can happily flit between their high-minded studies and the exploitation of prostitutes. I'm not really sure what the point is, unless to suggest that too much reading and too little life has driven Vasilyev past the brink of reason...The other two stories feel more successful. In The Black Monk, the overworked Kovrin seeks sanctuary with his childhood guardian Pesotsky and Pesotsky's daughter Tanya in the country. His erratic mental state finds expression in visions of a black monk, whose flattering addresses lead Kovrin to an exaggerated notion of his own importance. Moving from exuberant affection to cold disdain, his sense of his own brilliance leads him into a tragic sequence of events. And, finally, Anna Round the Neck sees the titular Anna married off to a rich but old and ugly Modeste Alekseyevich. Having given up her freedom in the hope of gaining financial security for her impoverished family, Anna is distressed to realise that her husband means to keep a tight rein on the purse-strings. But, when she becomes something of a social sensation, Anna's principles are quite to disappear as she savours the thrill of high-society living.I have another collection of Chekhov's short stories (Gooseberries) waiting to be read, which will feature in a future Bite-Sized Russians post, but at the moment I'm not exactly bowled over. The stories don't have the power of The Queen of Spades or the nonsensical wit of The Nose. However, I'm sure that it's just a case of waiting until I find the right one, and then I'll be swept off my feet.