Interactive Media: 1158 books

Between five and six in the evening. A fairly well-known man of learning is sitting in his study nervously biting his nails. 'It's positively revolting,' he says, continually looking at his watch. 'It shows the utmost disrespect for another man's time and work. In England such a person would not earn a farthing, he would die of hunger. You wait a minute, when you do come . . . .'

The wife of a former collegiate assessor walks into a bank and demands the missing pay of her dismissed husband. 'I am a weak, defenceless woman', she reasons. She repeats this endlessly, exhausts the already exhausted and gout afflicted bank manager and the rest of his staff. In the end she gets...

Honored Sir, Father and Benefactor, a petty clerk called Nevyrazimov sitting in his office on the Easter Eve in the company of a cockroach scurrying the table, muses upon what he might do to make it in the world.

A boy of two years and eight months makes his first foray into the outside world in a company of his somewhat wayward nanny and is quite overwhelmed, having got even his first taste of alcohol. In the evening he cannot get to sleep. The soldiers with the brooms, the big cats, the horses, the bit of...

A native Frenchman no longer tutors the wealthy landlord's children as they've grown up and left the house. The Frenchman is now paid simply to be around, to be properly dressed, to smell of scent, and to listen to Kamyshev's babble, to eat and drink and sleep. It may sound like a dream job but there's always a catch.

Strizhin, who normally leads a sober and regular life, comes home from a christening party where he had permitted himself to drink four glasses of vodka and a glass of wine, the taste of which suggested something midway between vinegar and castor oil. And of course spirituous liquors being like sea-water...

Polinka, a thin fair little person whose mother is the head of a dressmaking establishment, is standing in the middle of the shop looking about for some one. Nikolay Timofeitch, a graceful dark young man, fashionably dressed, with frizzled hair and a big pin in his cravat, has already cleared a place on the counter and is craning forward, looking at Polinka with a smile.

A district doctor moves to town and is encouraged to meet Turkins family only to fall helplessly in love with their daughter. The Turkins are the smartest family in a small, unnamed town. The father plays puns on words, the wife writes and reads aloud unrealistic novels, and the daughter pounds the keyboards of the piano with the hope of becoming a professional pianist.

A piano tuner called Murkin, a close-shaven man with a yellow face, with a nose stained with snuff, and cotton-wool in his ears, came out of his hotel-room into the passage. And looking at his frightened face one might have supposed that the ceiling had fallen in on him or that he had just seen a...

A poor girl, gymnasium student, with five brothers, marries a rich state official who counts every single piece of bread, demands from her subserviance and gratitude, is scornful of her relatives... She endures all this, trying not to argue with him, so as not to fall back into destitude again. Then...

Yegor could not imagine his future works but he could see distinctly how the papers would talk of him, how the shops would sell his photographs, with what envy his friends would look after him.

Ivan Chervyakov, a petty government official, while in the theatre, sneezes right upon the head of a man sitting in front of him, who happens to be a high-ranking government official. He spends the evening and the next day fawning before his sneeze victim trying to extract forgiveness, but what he...

Yegor the huntsman, walking down a country road accidentally meets his estranged wife Pelageya whom he's been married for twelve years but visited just several times, and even then, drunk and violent. She weeps and, fawning before him, implores him to visit her more often. He tries to explain why...

Madame Nashatyrin is fed up with violent behaviour and foul language emanating from abusive male guest next door. She has two grown up daughters and is concerned about their well being when complaining to the hotel-keeper. 'Either give me other apartments, or I shall leave your confounded hotel altogether!...