Anton Chekhov (Trans. Ronald Wilks) Penguin Classics, 2004, PB, 240pp, £9.78, 978-0140448986

There’s much to be said for short novels you can read in a couple of evenings, without the commitment needed for a blockbuster. If you’re looking for a great example, I’d recommend The Shooting Party by the Russian dramatist, Anton Chekhov. He wrote it in his early 20s in 1884, the year he qualified as a doctor. It contains orgies, violence, drunkenness, class conflict, revolutionary sentiments, love triangles, and murders. It includes possibly the most detailed postmortem report ever to appear in a work of fiction. And it’s also very funny. Much of the humour arises from the way Chekhov has fun with the …