Recommendations
Books Like Three Sisters
Best books to read after Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
Readers who love Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov are drawn to its combination of elegiac melancholy, the emotional weight of unfulfilled aspiration, and the formal precision with which Chekhov shows people talking past each other while their lives change around them — they want plays and novels that deal with aspiration and its disappointment, the weight of time, and the feeling of being unable to change the life you are living.
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The Cherry Orchard
by Anton Chekhov
The companion and the last Chekhov play — the Ranevskaya family's loss of the cherry orchard. Companion late Chekhov plays: both organized around a loss that is coming and cannot be prevented, and both end with the loss complete and the characters scattered
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Uncle Vanya
by Anton Chekhov
The companion — Vanya's long years of service to Serebryakov and the devastating recognition that the service was wasted. Companion Chekhov plays about people organized around an illusion (Vanya's belief in Serebryakov; the sisters' belief in Moscow) and the devastation of its removal
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The Seagull
by Anton Chekhov
The earlier companion — Nina, Trigorin, Treplev, Arkadina at the country estate. Companion Chekhov plays about aspiration and its disappointment: Nina's aspiration is for a career on the stage; the sisters' aspiration is for Moscow. Both ask what remains after the aspiration has failed
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The Iceman Cometh
by Eugene O'Neill
O'Neill's companion about the pipe dreams that sustain people's lives. The Iceman Cometh and Three Sisters are companion investigations of the same philosophical problem: can people live without the belief that tomorrow will be different? Both answer no — but where Chekhov's characters face their hopelessness with elegiac sadness, O'Neill's are destroyed by the attempt to live without illusion
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Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
The companion theatrical image of the human need to believe that something is coming that will change everything. The sisters waiting for Moscow and Didi and Gogo waiting for Godot are the two great theatrical images of this condition: the evidence that nothing is coming, and the impossibility of stopping the waiting
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The Years
by Virginia Woolf
Woolf's companion in the literary tradition of the novel organized around a family across decades and the question of what is lost in the passage of time. Companion investigations of the same question: what happens to aspiration across time, and what remains after the life that was hoped for has not materialized
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Long Day's Journey into Night
by Eugene O'Neill
O'Neill's companion in the theatrical tradition of the family confined in a space across a single day of revelation — the Tyrones' terrible day. Both Long Day's Journey and Three Sisters are organized around a family whose members love each other and damage each other simultaneously, and whose capacity for action has been exhausted by the weight of what they cannot change
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A Taste of Honey
by Shelagh Delaney
The companion in the theatrical tradition of the play about people who want more than their circumstances can offer. Companion plays about aspiration and its disappointment, but from different class registers: Chekhov's sisters are educated and express their disappointment in the language of aspiration; Delaney's Jo is working-class and expresses hers in the language of survival
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