He did, however, enjoy the voyage home from Sakhalin, via Hong Kong, Singapore and Sri Lanka, where he unwisely acquired three mongooses that he ended up giving to a zoo.ĭapper, dandyish, a qualified doctor and proud of his work ethic, Chekhov comes across as charismatic and deeply likable.

Unlike Chatwin, Chekhov never repeated it. Journey to Sakhalin deserves to be better known and more widely read, but let’s face it, tales of a Russian prison colony at the other end of the world are always going to be a tough sell.Ĭhekhov’s expedition to Sakhalin was a bolt from the blue – a quixotic, uncharacteristic explosion of adventurousness similar to the impulse that propelled Bruce Chatwin from a comfortable job in Sotheby’s to Patagonia. The painstaking, courageous social activist that emerges from his writings about the trip is a corrective to the way we tend to see Chekhov outside Russia: as a writer preoccupied with all the flavours of middle-class misery. He interviewed thousands of prisoners and settlers on the island in order to raise awareness of their predicament. It took him two-and-a-half months to reach his destination: the North Pacific island of Sakhalin, north of Japan, and the penal colony there, which he described as hell.Ĭhekhov spent three months on Sakhalin, carrying out a census and writing reports about the place that were published in a work of non-fiction that the New Yorker, no less, called the greatest work of journalism of the 19th century. In 1890, despite having been diagnosed with tuberculosis, he undertook an extraordinary overland journey by train, carriage and riverboat to Russia’s far east.

OL24340119W Page_number_confidence 87.88 Pages 134 Partner Innodata Pdf_module_version 0.0.13 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20210517095156 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 465 Scandate 20210514065827 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9780141032856 Tts_version 4.Despite being best-known in the west as the author of plays in which members of the Russian gentry sit around waiting for the samovar to boil, Chekhov clearly had an intrepid streak. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 03:00:52 Boxid IA40116810 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

A Russian Affair by Anton Chekhov