SOURCE: Scott, R. C. “Fictional Stethoscope on Human Condition.” Book World—The Washington Times (13 March 1994): B7.

In the following review, Scott regards the novellas in The Palace Thief as engaging and provocative and compares them to the work of Anton Chekhov.

“Medicine is my lawful wife,” wrote Anton Chekov to his publisher Aleksey Suvorin, “and literature my mistress.” Suvorin had been trying to persuade Chekov to give up doctoring in favor of writing, but the doctor could not be made to abandon his belief in his ability to reduce human suffering. Neither could he forsake his writing. In addition to the plays, he wrote 588 short stories before succumbing at the age of 44 to the tuberculosis he knew he had, but had long denied.

One is left to wonder, then, at his potential literary prodigiousness had he only taken Suvorin's advice, which brings us, a century later, to the...