title: The Devil's Candle
author: Leader, Nicholas L.
description: 1898. A late summer's evening in Yalta on the Crimean peninsula, where a young woman, no longer willing to remain a bored housewife, meets and falls in love with an attractive older man. Back in Moscow the lovers struggle against the tyranny of their loveless marriages. Readers who are familiar with Chekhov's short story 'The Lady with the Little Dog' may feel dissatisfied with his ambiguous ending. How can these lovers, meeting in secret, ever resolve their dilemma? Reimagining this timeless story, 'The Devil's Candle' provides us with one possible solution, in which the turbulent emotions of infatuation, love, adultery, hubris and revenge are set against an undercurrent of social commentary expressed in the fin de siecle malaise of imperial Russia.