The Duel
Edition: First Vintage Classics Edition (2); movie tie-in
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 126
ISBN-13: 9780307742872
Copyright date: 2010
Description: In Anton Chekhov's The Duel, escalat- ing animosity between two men with opposing philosophies of life is played out against the backdrop of a seedy resort on the Black Sea coast.

Laevsky is a dissipated romantic given to gambling and flirtation; he has run off with another man's wife, the beautiful but vapid Nadya, and now finds himself tiring of her. The scientist von Koren is contemp- tuous of Laevsky; as a fanatical devotee of Darwin, von Koren believes the other man to be unworthy of survival and is further enraged by his treatment of Nadya. As the confrontation between the two becomes in- creasingly heated, it leads to a duel that is as comically inadvertent as it is inevitable. Masterfully translated by the award-winning Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Duel is the full- est and one of the most subtle examples of Chekhov's narrative art.