My Life: The Story of a Provincial

Written by Anton Chekhov

Narrated by Expatriate

A provincial youth of wealth and noble status refuses to employ himself in the typical occupations of the higher classes, thus acquiring a reputation as a lazy good-for-nothing. In reality, he is intensely sensitive to the injustices perpetrated by his social class upon the working classes of town and country, and resolves to become a common laborer, taking employment as a house painter and ikon gilder. All classes of society around him respond to this revolutionary action with bewilderment and ridicule, even the lowest workmen feeling threatened by this insolent shaking of the cosmic structure. Possibly Chekhov's most passionate outcry against the corruption and hypocrisy of every class of conventional society, "My Life" resonates with an Ibsenesque outrage and frustration of powerful relevance to twenty-first century life. (Summary by Expatriate)

• Language: English
• Publisher: LibriVox
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014

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.