Three Years

A wealthy merchant's son makes a calculation that will define the rest of his life. Laptev abandons Polina, the woman who genuinely loves him, in favor of Yulia, a stunning young woman whose beauty is matched only by her emptiness. What follows is a masterful portrait of a marriage starved of meaning. Laptev, now trapped in a house he cannot leave and a life he cannot change, searches desperately for something that will make his days bearable. Meanwhile, Yulia spends her youth circling through Moscow's glittering social scene, neither aging nor growing, suspended in a permanent present tense. Chekhov, with his characteristic precision, asks a question that has no comfortable answer: what remains when love has been traded for beauty, and meaning has been swapped for respectability? This is a novel about the specific loneliness of those who chose wrong and must now live with the consequences.