Chekhov in my life

Book title: Chekhov in my life Author: Lidia Avilova Publisher: Fawaasil Book classification: Novel Summary of the book: "There is not a single word in my love story that is from my imagination. Throughout the time I was writing it, I was restrained by the fear of being swept away by my fantasy, my dream, my assumption, to distort the truth. The memory of Anton Pavlovich is to me as sacred as to allow even the slightest deviation from the truth in my memoirs about him." This is what Lidia Avilova wrote in her introduction to these memoirs. As for Ivan Bunin, the great Russian writer and Nobel laureate in Literature in 1933, he wrote in his later days, while preparing a book about Chekhov: "The memoirs written by Lidia Avilova with great brilliance, and with rare talent and extraordinary insight, were a discovery for me. I knew well Lidia Avilova, who was distinguished by honesty, intelligence, talent, modesty, and a rare sense of sarcasm—even at herself. After reading her memoirs, I also looked at Chekhov differently; something in him was revealed to me in a new way. It never occurred to me before that there was that relationship between them. (…) Yes, biographers of Chekhov will have to take Avilova’s memoirs seriously."