The Duel

The Duel is a novel by Russian author Aleksandr Kuprin published in 1905. It is generally considered his best work; even though Kuprin's 1896 short story Moloch first made his name known as a writer it was The Duel (1905) which made him famous. Because of it "Kuprin was highly praised by fellow writers including Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, Nobel Prize-winning Ivan Bunin" and Leo Tolstoy who acclaimed him a true successor to Chekhov. The story concerns an intelligent young officer, Second Lieutenant Romashov, stationed at a dull military garrison in southern Russia where he can not stomach his sadistic and stupid colleagues and military life. He falls in love with the wife of a superior officer, a cold and calculating woman whose one ambition is her husband's advancement. The affair leads in the end to the duel of the title, both externally, and figuratively through the young man's naive dreams of grandeur confronting the degeneration of military life and society of the time.