The affair leads in the end to the duel of the title, both externally, and figuratively through the young man's naive dreams of grandeur confronting the degeneration of military life and society of the time.

Romashov contemplates forfeiting the duel and leaving the army, but Shurochka talks him out of it, proposing instead that they both shoot in the air.

The novel was published soon after the end of the Russo-Japanese War — which Russia lost – and many saw it as a political criticism of the Russian military system.

[2] Translator Josh Billings (2011) said the novel was partly a "revenge on the rosily-romantic picture of garrison life made popular by the warmongering of the early 1900s.

A later Soviet adaptation to film was made in 1982, called Shurochka with screenplay and direction by Iosif Kheifits, starring Yelena Finogeyeva, Andrei Nikolayev and Lyudmila Gurchenko.