ANTON CHEKHOV was born in 1860 in southern Russia. The grandson of a serf, he became a physician, paying for his education by selling satirical and humorous sketches to the newspapers. He soon turned to serious short stories, winning the Pushkin Prize in 1887, and went on to write plays, including
Uncle Vanya,
The Seagull,
Three Sisters, and
The Cherry Orchard, and novellas, including
The Steppe and
The Duel. He died of tuberculosis in 1904.
Together, RICHARD PEVEAR and LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY have translated works by Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Bulgakov, Leskov, and Pasternak. They were twice awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Dostoevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina). They are married and live in France.