Her mouth was almost pressed against his, and her words were like quick, hurried kisses: "You must absolutely go through with the duel tomorrow." An absorbing saga about the brutalities of military life upon its own soldiers. Stranded at a distant outpost, young Romashov finds himself obliged to fight a duel--over something he realizes is meaningless. As the novel hurtles toward a startling conclusion, it reveals itself to be a luminous depiction of the end of an era.