Contents: The River of Life, Captain Ribnikov, The Outrage, The Witch. Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin (1870-1938) was a Russian novelist and short-story writer. He was an army officer for several years before he resigned to pursue a writing career, and was a friend of Maxim Gorky. He won fame with The Duel (1905), a novel of protest against the Russian military system. In 1909, Yama: The Pit, his nove...