The book shows Chekhov in a new light, as a writer with a synthetic ethical worldview on which his poetics are based. The book’s key finding is that the temporal experience of modernity lies at the centre of Chekhov’s work. This conclusion is reached by comparing the ways in which modern temporality is represented in the different genres in which Chekhov wrote, from the non-fictional Sakhalin Island to his short fiction and drama. In terms of methodology, the book combines the historiographical and sociological views of modernity as based on a certain understanding of time with Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope.