Gusev

Written by Anton Chekhov

Narrated by Peter Coates

"Gusev"  is an 1890 short story by Anton Chekhov.
Several discharged soldiers return home from the Far East by ship. Confined to the hospital cabin, they are all apparently dying of consumption and seemingly indifferent to their condition. Among them are Gusev, a mild, racist, slightly dim man, and the mysterious Pavel Ivanovich, an ardent "protester" who often goes on diatribes (many of which Gusev either misunderstands or ignores) about his lifelong commitment to telling people "the truth to their faces". Ivanovich is proud of having riled every single person around him during his three years' service in the East, and thinks all the other men present are fools. He later reveals that he is the son of a priest and had to disguise himself as a peasant to buy his third-class ticket. One day, while Gusev is asleep, Pavel Ivanovich dies. One of the other soldiers, seeing that Gusev will also die shortly, helps him up to the ship's deck, where they look at the waves crashing into one another. Several days later, Gusev dies. His body is sewn into a sailcloth sack and weighted. After a short prayer, it is thrown into the ocean, where a shark bites at it. Up above, the ocean begins to reflect the colors of the sky, "...tender, joyous, passionate colours for which it is hard to find a name in human speech".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
• Release date: Mar 7, 2024

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.