This collection contains the following eleven stories: Grief Agafya Misfortune A Boring Story (From an Old Man's Notebook) The Grasshopper Ward No. 6 Ariadne The House with an Attic Ionych The Darling The Lady with the Lapdog Anton Pavlovich Chekhov may be likened to his contemporaries, the "pointilliste" painters. Piece by piece, episode by episode, character by character, he constructs in prose a survey of the human condition. As David Magarshack writes in his introduction, on reading these stories 'one gets the impression of holding life itself, like a fluttering bird, in one's cupped hands'.