The Summer Guest

The translator of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Alison Anderson, delivers a remarkable literary novel—with a stunning conclusion—inspired by historical events, in which a diary weaves together the lives of three women: a dying Ukranian doctor who befriends Anton Chekov in the 19th century, a modern-day London book editor, and the woman she hires to translate it into English.Blinded by a fatal illness, young Ukrainian doctor Zinaida Lintvaryova is living on her family's rural estate in the summer of 1888. When a family from Moscow rents a cottage on the grounds, Zinaida develops a deep bond with one of their sons, a doctor and writer of modest but growing fame called Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Intelligent, curious, and increasingly introspective as her condition worsens, Zinaida keeps a diary chronicling this extraordinary friendship that comes to define the last years of her life.In the winter of 2014, Katya Kendall's London publishing house is...