ELLIOTT BAY BOOK GROUP
Tuesday, May 1 at 6:30 p.m.

Each month, the Elliott Bay Book Club reads and discusses the best in contemporary fiction with the occasional classic thrown in for good measure. This month we examine Anton Chekhov's The Duel from The Complete Short Novels, a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The Duel is Chekhov's longest work of fiction. Laevsky is a self-styled "superfluous man" and Von Koren a zoologist and Social Darwinist. The two demolish one another behind each others back before they resort to loaded pistols. Novelist David Mitchell said of The Duel, "...I would save it from a burning house before everything else I've ever read."

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