"Oneworld Classics" will include the greatest masterpieces of all time, from every literature and genre and will also redefine and enrich the classics canon by promoting unjustly neglected works of enduring significance. 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. Collected here for the first time in one volume are the fully annotated translations of Chekhov's impressions of his trip through Siberia. 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 expose, "Sakhalin Island" is a haunting work of tremendous importance which had a huge impact both on Chekhov's subsequent work and on Russian society.
契诃夫，俄国文学大师，19世纪末俄国现实主义文学流派的杰出代表，与法国的莫泊桑、美国的欧•亨利并成为“世界三大短篇小说巨匠”。
1890年7月到9月，契诃夫只身一人，先坐火车，后骑马、乘船，来到政治犯流放地萨哈林岛进行实地考察。岛上地狱般的惨状和西伯利亚的贫穷给契诃夫留下了深刻的印象，使他对黑暗的现实有了更进一步的认识，写下了伟大的经典非虚构作品《萨哈林旅行记》和中篇小说《第六病室》。