Once we become accustomed to reading like he reads, we proceed through the stories with great joy, anticipating even further delights with his explications to follow. Saunders is always careful not to confuse the internal workings of a story with authorial intent. The author seeks to answer “the million-dollar question: What makes a reader keep reading?” As he shows throughout this thrilling literary lesson, the answer has little to do with conventional notions of theme and plot it’s more about energy, efficiency, intentionality, and other “details of internal dynamics.” Saunders explains how what might seem like flaws often work in the story’s favor and how we love some stories even more because of-rather than in spite of-those flaws. Opening with Chekhov’s “The Cart,” Saunders shows just how closely we’ll be reading-a page or two of the original text at a time followed by multiple pages of commentary. All stories are included in full, and readers need not be familiar with Russian literature to find this plan richly rewarding. This is the book version of that class, illuminating seven stories by the masters: three by Chekhov, two by Tolstoy, and one each by Turgenev and Gogol. “Some of the best moments of my life…have been spent teaching that Russian class,” he writes. Though Saunders is known mainly as an inventive, award-winning writer-of novels, short stories, cultural criticism-he has also taught creative writing at Syracuse since 1997. The renowned author delivers a master class on the Russian short story and on the timeless value of fiction.

A swim in the pond in the rain