The Duel

MP3 Audio CD. The Duel is a novel written by Anton Chekhov, one of the most successful playwrights and novelists. The novel was first printed in 1891. It was adapted in a television series by Iosif Kheifits in 1973 renamed as The Bad Good Man, starring Vladimir Vysotsky and by Dover Kosashvili in 2010 as The Duel.

The story is about the two main characters, Ivan Andreich Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, a couple who have lived in Caucasus. Nadyezhda is married to her first husband and a few of their neighbors dislike the idea of the lovers living together in the same house. Ivan tells his friend Samoilenko that he is not anymore in love with Nadyezhda. As a result, Laevsky drinks excessively and gambles having no sense of direction in his life. Von Koren, a scientist, thinks that what Ivan is doing is useless, and feels that killing him would be useful to all the residents. He challenges Ivan to a duel, from which his life will change entirely.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian dramatist and authored many short stories. He is regarded as one of the most important and celebrated writers of short story in history. As a dramatist, he produced four plays and his greatest short stories are highly noteworthy and noted by fellow authors and critics. Together with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is mostly considered as one of the three influential personalities in early modernism in the theater. Chekhov is also a medical doctor while having a career in writing most of the time. As he would say, "Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress."

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov had the intention at first to produce dramas and write stories only for financial purposes, but as his creative literary passion grew, he made explicit modernizations which have inspired the change and progress of the present day short story.