The Duel and Other Stories

What It's About

This collection brings together eight stories that form Volume 2 of the Tales of Chekhov series, first published in Russian in 1891. The title story, "The Duel," follows the bitter ideological clash between Ivan Laevsky, a disillusioned intellectual fleeing his own responsibilities, and Baron von Koren, a rigid moralist convinced that weakness should be eliminated for the good of society. Set in a provincial seaside town in the Caucasus, it builds toward a confrontation that exposes the dangers of absolute conviction as much as of moral drift. The shorter stories that accompany it — including "Neighbours," "At Home," and "The Princess" — turn to quieter domestic and social settings, each uncovering private tension beneath a surface of respectability.

Key Concepts

Across the collection, Chekhov weighs moral certainty against moral drift, neither siding fully with the idealist nor the cynic. He is equally attentive to social hypocrisy — the gap between how his characters present themselves and what actually governs their behaviour — and to the class tensions of provincial Russian life. The stories are built on psychological realism rather than incident: interior conflict, not plot, is what drives them.

About the Author

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who trained and worked as a physician. Though already respected within Russian literary circles in his lifetime, he did not reach a wide English-language readership until after the First World War. He is now regarded as one of the great masters of the short story, known for a spare, understated style and close psychological observation.

About This Edition

This is a 1916 translation by Constance Garnett.