Chekhov Uncle Vanya Reading Order

Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1899) is perhaps the most emotionally devastating play in the Russian repertoire and one of the most perfectly constructed in any language — a work in which nothing happens in the sense of dramatic events, and yet everything is destroyed. Vanya and his niece Sonya have spent twenty years managing the rural estate of Sonya's father, Professor Serebryakov, sacrificing their own lives to support the academic career they have believed to be important. The professor arrives for the summer with his young wife Yelena, and Vanya discovers — with a force that shatters him — that the great man is a fraud. His rage cannot save him; his passion for Yelena is unrequited; he fires two shots at Serebryakov and misses both. The play ends with Vanya and Sonya returning to the account books, with nothing changed and everything lost. Chekhov called it a comedy; audiences have never stopped weeping.