Richard Edward Connell Jr. (1893 – 1949) was an American author and journalist, probably best remembered for his short story «The Most Dangerous Game». Connell was one of the most popular American short story writers of his time. He had equal success as a journalist and screenwriter and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1942 for best original story. Widely anthologized and the author's bestknown work. «The Most Dangerous Game» features as its main character a big-game hunter from New York, who becomes shipwrecked on an isolated island in the Caribbean, and is hunted by a Russian aristocrat.
The story is an inversion of the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s.
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“The Most Dangerous Game”, also published as “The Hounds of Zaroff”, is a story by Richard Connell, first published in Collier’s on January 19, 1924. The story features a big-game hunter from New York City who falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted by a Russian aristocrat. The story is inspired by the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were particularly fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s.
The story has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1932 RKO Pictures film The Most Dangerous Game, starring Joel McCrea and Leslie Banks, and for a 1943 episode of the CBS Radio series Suspense, starring Orson Welles. It has been called the “most popular short story ever written in English.” Upon its publication, it won the O. Henry Award.
After falling overboard from a yacht, Sanger Rainsford swims to a nearby island. There General Zaroff, a big-game hunter who knows of Rainsford from published accounts of his hunting snow leopards in Tibet, invites him to dinner. Zaroff is bored of hunting because it no longer challenges him; he has moved to Ship-Trap Island in order to capture shipwrecked sailors. Any captives who can elude Zaroff, his manservant Ivan, and a pack of hunting dogs for three days is set free. No one has yet lasted that long, although a couple of sailors had come close. Zaroff offers sailors a choice—should they decline to be hunted, they will be handed over to Ivan, who had once been official knouter for The Great White Czar. Rainsford denounces this as barbarism, but has no way out. He reluctantly agrees to be hunted…
'The Most Dangerous Game' is a tense story pitting man against man and the hunted against the hunter. Sanger Rainsford falls from a yacht on route to Rio de Janeiro to hunt jaguars. He manages to swim to a nearby island, but there the hunter becomes the hunted.
The most dangerous game is a tense story pitting man against man and the hunted against the hunter. Sanger Rainsford falls from a yacht on route to Rio de Janeiro to hunt jaguars. He manages to swim to a nearby island, but there the hunter becomes the hunted.
When Sanger Rainsford falls off his yacht on his way to the Amazon forest for a hunting expedition, he washes up on a strange Caribbean island only to find that more danger lies ahead. When the owner of a palatial chateau and his henchman tell Rainsford that they are no longer interested in hunting animals and that men are the true test of a hunter, Rainsford goes from being the hunter to the hunted as he struggles to survive in a game of cat and mouse.