Alexander Kuprin wrote about people it was not customary to notice: prostitutes, soldiers, tramps, circus performers. And he did it without moralizing — he simply showed life from the inside.
He was born in 1870 in Narovchat; his father died the year of his birth. Cadet corps, military school, service. Then retirement and journalism: he worked as a reporter, a stevedore, a land surveyor, a psalm-reader.
The Duel (1905) is the story of an officer who sees army life unvarnished: its cruelty, stupidity, absurdity. The Garnet Bracelet tells of a minor official's love for a woman who cannot love him back. The Pit is about life in a brothel.
He emigrated after the revolution. He returned in 1937 — ill, nearly blind. He died a year later. They meant to use him as a symbol of the émigrés' return; he was already too weak to resist.