Gone Astray

‘Gone Astray’ is one of Chekhov’s earlier comedic short stories that is a light-hearted romp about two drunken lawyers trying to find their way home at night. Chekhov’s masterful use of irony is present here as one of the lawyers, Kozyavkin, accidentally violates the law by breaking into a house he believes to be his own. The short features some of Chekhov’s most farcical images, such as the overly confident Kozyavkin blindly stumbling through a chicken coop to find his misplaced belongings. ‘Gone Astray’ is a hilarious short story that is an interesting bridge between Chekhov’s earlier comedic work and later melancholy stories as his satirical view of the upper classes is a constant theme throughout. Featuring terrific characters and slapstick comedy, ‘Gone Astray’ should be read by fans of Chekhov or the television series ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’.

A prolific writer of seven plays, a novel and hundreds of short stories, Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) is considered one of the best practitioners of the short story genre in literature. True to life and painfully morbid with his miserable and realistic depictions of Russian everyday life, Chekhov’s characters drift between humour, melancholy, artistic ambition, and death. Some of his best-known works include the plays 'Uncle Vanya', 'The Seagull', and 'The Cherry Orchard', where Chekhov dramatizes and portrays social and existential problems. His short stories unearth the mysterious beneath the ordinary situations, the failure and horror present in everyday life.