‘In the Graveyard’ is a tale that is at once both hopeful and hopeless in which Anton Chekhov explores the tragedies of life with a comic touch. The short story opens with friends wandering a graveyard discussing a man they once knew whose ‘digestion was fine’ but still died due to his nosiness. This mixture of the mundane and the mystical which is fundamental to much of Chekhov’s celebrated writing is on display in this black comedy.
As the protagonists journey deeper into the graveyard the atmosphere grows more melancholic as they meet characters resigned to tragedy. But morbidity and mockery co-exist in equal measure in the graveyard as Chekhov’s signature satirical dialogue celebrates life while exploring death. Chekhov’s modernist style describes a familiar event with lyrical prose that creates a sense of wonderment in the ordinary. This short story displays Chekhov’s dark wit and is suitable for fans of writers such as Franz Kafka or Martin McDonagh. 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.