Men

"The Men" of Anton Chekhov is one of the most realistic, brave and resonant stories in Russian classical literature.Written in 1897, it produced the effect of a breakdown of the bomb, unhappyly destroying the idealized idea of the Russian village and the peasant life that was then in society. The story begins with the fact that the sick lacay from the Moscow hotel Nikolai Chikildeev together with his wife Olga and daughter Sasha returns from the city to his native village of Zhukovo, hoping for the support of the family and fresh air. However, instead of the patriarchal idylly, the family faces unclean need, dirt, ignorance, drunkeness and cruelty. In the narrow shore of the Chikilde House, constant disputes go up, and the life of the village residents seems deprived of any spiritual glory and elementary human dignity. Through the perception of the subtle, divine Olga and her daughter, Chekhov develops before the reader an honest, severe but deeply compassionate plate of people's life. Chekhov does not judge his heroes and does not fall into a dry shape. With the skill of a genius observer and physician, he explores the social and spiritual drama of that time, showing that the sources of peasant wildness lie in the hardest work, the impotence and the centuries-long darkness. “Men” is a deeply humanistic work about the pain for a person, about the search for mercy and forgiveness even where they seem to have no place. **About what the book is in three words:** Village, Realism, Compassion. **Who to read:** A lovers of the honest and deep Russian classics, people interested in the real history and life of the pre-revolutionary Russia, as well as all fans of the psychological prose of Cechov.