Anton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels here brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

The Steppe the most lyrical of the five is an account of a nine-year-old boy s frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figures a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility on a collision course that ends in a...