—Alexander Kuprin.

A drunkard, he often spends time in pubs.
He almost killed one of his wives when he set her dress on fire...
And his wife locked him in his office, forcing him to write the required number of pages; when Kuprin had done what was required of him, his wife would let Kurort out and give him alcohol.

Kuprin possessed remarkable physical strength: he could tear apart an iron poker with his bare hands or bend a copper coin with his fingers. He was acquainted with Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy (the latter highly praised "The Duel"). The writer was very fond of animals: dogs, cats, and a monkey lived in his house, and various birds and animals lived in his dacha, which he observed and described in his stories.

Born on August 26 (September 7), 1870, in Narovchat (Penza Governorate). He was the sixth child in the family: his father was a minor official from hereditary nobility, and his mother, Lyubov Alekseevna Kulunchakova, came from an impoverished Tatar princely family. When Alexander was one year old, his father died of cholera. In 1874, his mother and children moved to Moscow. Education. At the age of six, he was sent to the Moscow Razumovsky boarding school for orphans. Later, he studied at the Second Moscow Military Gymnasium, and in 1887, he entered the Aleksandrovsk Military School. After graduating in 1890, he served in an infantry regiment for four years. This experience later formed the basis for many of his works. At the age of 24, Kuprin retired. After the army. Lacking a civilian profession, he traveled extensively across Russia, trying his hand at a variety of endeavors: he worked as a reporter, a blacksmith, a carpenter, an actor, a teacher at a school for the blind, unloaded watermelons, and studied dentistry. This rich life experience became a treasure trove for his prose. During these years, he met I. A. Bunin, A. P. Chekhov, and M. Gorky. His literary debut came in 1889, when the short story "The Last Debut" was published in the magazine "Russian Satirical Leaflet." During World War I, Kuprin demonstrated his patriotism: he opened a hospital in his home, campaigned for subscriptions to war loans, and in late 1914, he was mobilized into the militia (he was demobilized in 1915 due to health reasons). After the revolution, Kuprin rejected the policies of the Bolsheviks, sympathized with the Socialist Revolutionaries, and later joined the White movement. In 1919, he emigrated (first to Finland, then to France). During this period, he wrote the novels "The Junkers" and "Janeta," as well as a number of short stories. In 1937, Kuprin returned to the USSR. He died on August 25, 1938, in Leningrad from esophageal cancer. He is buried at the Literatorskie Mostki (Literary Bridge) of the Volkovskoye Cemetery (next to I.S. Turgenev).