The Bishop and Other Stories

Late and middle stories: a dying bishop in the last week of Lent remembering his mother, a ferryman monk on Easter Eve, a murder among religious fanatics at a lonely railway inn, and the long boyhood journey across the steppe that first made Chekhov's name. He wrote The Bishop in 1902, ill himself, and had carried the subject in his head for years. Thirty-seven plates by painters including Isaac Levitan and Mikhail Nesterov carry the cloister, the birch grove and the quiet of Russian faith alongside these last stories.