Kashtanka and Other Stories

Stories of children and of the adults who fail to notice them: a boy of seven at a keyhole watching the kitchen, a nursemaid who has not slept in days, a runaway, a dog lost between two owners. Chekhov practiced medicine throughout his writing life and observed children the way he observed patients, without sentiment and without a single explanatory sentence. Thirty-seven plates by painters including Vasily Perov and Ilya Repin, spanning 1801 to 1924, show the crowded rooms, tea tables and resting hunters among which unnoticed children stand.