Donald Rayfield
Travels with My Uncle Vanya
Reading Chekhov: Critical Journey
By Janet Malcolm
Granta Books 210pp £13.99 order from our bookshop
IF JANET MALCOLM has a pet cat and a pet ferret, I wouldn't mind betting that the cat has been declawed and the ferret has lost its scent glands. Her reading of Chekhov (the man as much as the stories and plays) is affectionate, attentive and acutely intelligent, but she renders a Chekhov familiar to us hm V S Pritchett or Ravmond Carver - a gentle. understated. well-trained pus\y cat, treading elegantly through the world.
Carried away by Chekhov's decent, often ineffectual and genteelly unhappy characters, readers are easily tempted to imagine the author-progenitor as much the same. True, violently antisocial characters, like the peasant rebel Dymov in 'The Steppe' or the murderous Lieutenant Solionv in The Three Sisters. are cold-shouldered out of the Chekhovian
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Catastrophe' as a category 'is too large and miscellaneous ... if there is a "correct" response to an earthquake, it is unlikely to have much in common with the "correct" response to an epidemic'.
Jonathan Sumption on Niall Ferguson's 'Doom'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/prime-minister-versus-pathogen
'He has been arrested in the past and upon his release, he has cheerfully persisted in his activism. His courage is exemplary.’
@lucyjpop investigates Zargana, the renowned Burmese satirist recently arrested as part of a widespread military crackdown.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/zargana-2
A new biography of the archaeologist and explorer Charles Masson provides a 'tale of intrigue, espionage, blackmail, disguise, rebellion, treasure and the discovery of lost civilisations', says @BijanOmrani.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/our-man-in-kabul