The Gambler

Alexei Ivanovich is a tutor in the household of a ruined Russian general staying at Roulettenburg, an imaginary German spa town built around its casino. The general is waiting for his rich old aunt in Moscow to die so that he can pay his debts and marry the adventuress Mademoiselle Blanche. Alexei is slavishly in love with the general's stepdaughter Polina, who mocks him. Then the aunt arrives in person, very much alive, and loses a fortune at the roulette table, and Alexei discovers in himself the same fever.

Dostoevsky dictated the short novel in less than a month in 1866 to meet a ruinous contract deadline; the stenographer, Anna Snitkina, became his wife. He knew the subject from his own losses at the tables of Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden, and the book is a sharp study of compulsion and pride. This translation is by C. J. Hogarth. In the same year he published Crime and Punishment.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was sentenced to death in 1849 for his part in a radical circle, reprieved at the last moment and sent to hard labour in Siberia, which he described in The House of the Dead.

His great novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, turn questions of guilt, faith and freedom into stories; White Nights is a gentle place to start.