The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov

Meet me in Montauk...I mean, Yalta.

I'm not a professional writer or a book critic by trade, just some random dude tucked away in a tiny corner of the internet who likes to read and occasionally dumps some haphazard thoughts into the void. I have tremendous respect for writers, especially fiction writers. Sitting down and producing anything meaningful is hard. Now, imagine being handed a writing prompt in a creative writing class as stale as: “A man and a woman are having an affair.” Most of us would immediately spiral into a never-ending vortex of clichés. Honestly, I’d bet that only a tiny fraction of writers could turn that tired setup into something memorable or profound.

Unless, of course, your name is Anton Chekhov.

As one of the most widely anthologized short stories out there, The Lady with the Little Dog earns every ounce of its reputation and then some. Chekhov takes one of the most overdone premises in literature and somehow crafts a story that’s deeply philosophical and emotionally layered. That’s the thing about Chekhov: he writes about human emotions with a depth that feels almost impossible given the narrative constraints of the short-story form. He never resorts to melodrama or moralizing; instead, he captures those subtle, complicated shifts in feeling. The guilt, longing, confusion and tenderness that make his characters feel painstakingly real.

In Chekhov’s hands, an affair becomes a doorway into the messy contradictions of the human heart, the way people can be both selfish and sincere, miserable and hopeful, trapped and awakened all at once. The fact that he accomplishes all of this with such calm, precise prose makes the story even more astonishing. The Lady with the Little Dog isn't just a fresh take on a banal premise; it’s easily one of the best short stories I’ve ever read.