Showing results by narrator "Max Bollinger" in All Categories

Unhappy in his marriage, a Moscow bank worker, Dmitri Gurov, is vacationing in Yalta, Crimea, where he sees a young lady walking along the seafront with her small dog. They are soon engaged in an affair and spend most of their time together walking and taking drives to Oreanda . Returning to Moscow and his daily routine, working by day and clubbing by night, Gurov expects to soon forget young Anna but finds he is haunted by her memory. Read in English, unabridged.

Nikolai Ivanich has never reconciled himself to life in the city and makes plans to acquire enough money to buy a small estate where he can grow gooseberries, a symbol in his mind of happy life in the countryside. He saves every penny and spends his days dreaming of the future estate: where the main building will be located, ducks swimming in a pond, and where the gooseberry bushes will be planted. His brother sees it as an escape from reality and an unnecessary limitation. Read in English, unabridged.

Human analysis differs from every other system of character analysis in that it classifies man into five types according to his biological evolution. No person achieves success or happiness when compelled to do what he naturally dislikes to do, since likes and dislikes stay with him to the grave. One of the biggest modern problems is that of helping men and women to discover and to capitalize on their inborn traits. Each of the five types is discussed in detail, with specific and detailed examples.

'Once, as I was wandering about the fields after partridges with Yermolai, I saw some way off a deserted garden, and turned into it. I had hardly crossed its borders when a snipe rose up out of a bush with a clatter. I fired my gun, and at the same instant, a few paces from me, I heard a shriek; the frightened face of a young girl peeped out for a second from behind the trees, and instantly disappeared. Yermolai ran up to me: "Why are you shooting here? There is a landowner living here."'

Would you go into voluntary solitary confinement for 15 years in order to get rich? And more importantly, what would happen to you in the end? Our protagonist, the banker, agrees to pay millions to a young lawyer who believes he can stay locked up for 15 years in exchange for a multimillion reward. The bet does go ahead, but what it leads to both surprises and frightens the banker. Read in English, unabridged.

Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making mediocrity pass for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin. Kovrin is a gifted man, well educated. Following the advice of his doctor, he decides to leave his busy city lifestyle and travels to recover his health in a beautiful family country estate. There he meets this mystical and prophetic Black Monk, a character from an ancient legend, which he thinks is nothing more than a hallucination.

In the town of Surat, in India, was a coffeehouse where many travellers and foreigners from all parts of the world met and conversed. One day a learned Persian theologian visited this coffeehouse. He was a man who had spent his life studying the nature of the deity and reading and writing books upon the subject. He had thought, read, and written so much about God that eventually he lost his wits, became quite confused and ceased even to believe in the existence of a god. Read in English, unabridged.

On a hot summer day two carpenters, Gerasim and Lyubim, sit in a pond, floundering about in the water under a willow tree, beside the unfinished bathing shed they were supposed to be working on. Blue from cold and wrangling, they struggle to drag a large eelpout by the gills, from under the root.... 

This volume of Chekhov stories offers a unique selection, each touching upon fundamentally important subjects such as the purpose and value of life, what it takes to be human, eternal life and higher objectives of human life, happiness, guilt and romance. 

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. Read in English, unabridged.

The cabman Iona's son recently died. He desperately and unsuccessfully tries to have a talk with the people he meets and tell them of how shattered he is. He ends up talking to his horse. Read in English, unabridged.

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 succeeds instead is only bringing out a fit of rage in him. Shocked, Chervyakov returns home to lie there and die, due to the sheer stress of having endured such horror. Read in English, unabridged.

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 glass, the tray of oranges, the bright buttons, all gathered together, weigh on his brain. He tosses from side to side, babbles, and, at last, unable to endure his excitement, begins crying.

We continue to explore the world of our feral friends and learn about some of their darker secrets, some of the naughty episodes of their hidden lives, and some of the most revealing confessions of what cats think about their human masters. It may come as a surprise, but cats often do watch humans and attempt to imitate their behaviour, albeit not always very successfully. And in the second half of this collection we meet humans who don't seem to know how to handle their pets without embarrassment and even those humans who try to be a bit too close to nature for their own good.  

In this volume we enter the hidden world of cats and discover their ways of life and how cat mothers teach their kittens important wisdom and lessons of life. The humorous tales are told through the eyes of the animal and reveal a great deal about human people as well as cat people. In the second half of this volume we meet a mysterious countryman who lives in deep forest and is able to talk to birds in their own language. We follow him on his meditative journey and learn more about animal life, nature, and Gamayune, a prophetic bird of Russian folklore. Read in English, unabridged.

The theme of romance continues in this volume and begins with iconic 'The Lady with the Dog' by Anton Chekhov. Set in Yalta, Crimea, appears at first as a holiday romance. Gurov is a married man but he holidays on his own and has a history of holiday affairs. He meets the lady of the story’s title with her Pomeranian dog. But Chekhov’s love stories are not romantic accounts of unrequited love or of love at first sight. Or, even of tortured love that is amplified by the agony of being unfulfilled. No, these are Chekhovian tales that surprise and intrigue our imagination. The second of this collection continues with King Lear. 

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. And of course spirituous liquors being like sea-water and glory: the more you imbibe of them the greater your thirst, Strizhin felt an overwhelming craving for another drink. He accidentally downed a glass of paraffin instead of vodka, and in desperate search for a doctor at 4 a.m. he found that a doctor is only readily found when he is not wanted.

Chekhov has always been huge inspiration for many great writers who came in contact with Chekhov's art. Thomas Mann wrote that Chekhov's short stories attain full epic stature and can even surpass in intensity the great towering novels. 'If I understood that better in later life than in my youth, this was largely owing to my growing intimacy with Chekhov's art; for his short stories rank with all that is greatest and best in European literature,' he concluded.

The importance of women and their influence can never be underestimated. This story vividly shows how in 19th century Russia, women pulled strings behind scenes to influence even the most principled and seemingly unbreakable of decision makers. And only Chekhov knew how to express such delicate matters in the most enjoyable and humorous way. Read in English, unabridged.

Madame Nashatyrin is fed up with violent behaviour and foul language emanating from an 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! It's a sink of iniquity! Why don't you get rid of the scoundrel?' But as soon as the marital status of the scoundrel is revealed, she meditates and concludes that there's something good in everyone after all.