payment page
Study Tools
Overview
“The Bet” is a short story by Anton Chekhov, first published in 1889 in the St. Petersburg paper Novoye Vremya (New Times) under the title “Fairytale.” It was later revised and republished as “The Bet” in Volume 4 of a set of Chekhov's Collected Works published between 1899–1901
. The story follows the outcome of a bet made between a banker and a lawyer during a debate about whether life imprisonment or capital punishment is the crueler punishment. On a fateful whim, the banker wagers two million rubles on the lawyer’s inability to last fifteen years in solitary confinement. What begins as a conversation about criminality soon turns into existential questions about the value and meaning of life.
