"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.