Anton Chekhov is one of the giants of modern literature, exerting a strong influence on many present-day novelists and dramatists. As a playwright, he ranks in popularity second only to Shakespeare in the English-speaking world. As a prose writer, he was one of the first to use the stream-of-consciousness technique, and his anti-heroic realism, full of ambiguity and allusion, provides no easy moral conclusions and results in a new kind of narrative approaching real life in a way no writer had achieved before him.

In the Twilight, the third collection of short stories compiled by Anton Chekhov himself, was his first major success and won him the prestigious Pushkin Prize when it was published in 1888. This volume represents a clear milestone in the writer's passage from the youthful Antosha Chekhonte, author of slight comic sketches, to the mature master of the short-story genre.

This edition presents the sixteen tales of the original collection - ranging from well-known and acknowledged gems such as 'Agafya' and 'On the Road' to others which will be fresh even to many seasoned readers of Chekhov - in a brand-new translation by Hugh Aplin, providing an invaluable glimpse into a pivotal moment in the writer's literary career.

What writers influenced me as a young man? Chekhov! As a dramatist? Chekhov! As a story writer? Chekhov!