Sakhalin Island

In 1890, the thirty-year-old Chekhov, already knowing that he was ill with tuberculosis, undertook an arduous eleven-week journey from Moscow across Siberia to the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin. Now collected here in one volume are the fully annotated translations of his impressions of his trip through Siberia, and the account of his threemonth sojourn on Sakhalin Island, together with the author’s notes, extracts from Chekhov’s letters to relatives and associates, and photographs.

Highly valuable both as a detailed depiction of the Tsarist system of penal servitude and as an insight into Chekhov’s motivations and objectives for visiting the colony and writing the exposé, Sakhalin Island is a haunting work of tremendous importance, which had a huge impact both on Chekhov’s subsequent work and on Russian society.