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3.5 

The Gambler

By Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

In the fictional town of Roulettenberg, Germany, a Russian tutor to the children of a seemingly wealthy general is enticed to play roulette at the local casino. First playing for others (including his beloved Polina Alexandrovna), he soon gets a taste for the experience himself, which can lead in only one direction.

Dostoevsky wrote this story based at least partially on personal experience. After his second marriage (and the successful publication of Crime and Punishment) he and his wife took a honeymoon in Baden-Baden, where Dostoevsky lost large quantities of money at the roulette table. To get his financial situation back to normal he then set up a wager with his publisher: they’d have the right to publish his work for free for nine years if he couldn’t deliver this novel by November 1866. He succeeded in this, and was able to move on to writing The Idiot.

The Gambler has been translated to screen and radio, and was even turned into an opera by Prokofiev. This edition is the 1915 translation by C. J. Hogarth.

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529 Reviews

3.5
Thinking Face“A straight forward read about the dangers of the inclination of man to rise out of one’s current station/ circumstances. Of course, everyone wants to go higher no matter the heights already achieved. In this sense the analogy of gambling works amazing and when characters are at the table(less often than one would hope) you feel that rush. Unfortunately the characters are very boring and plot quite dry and predictable. The book suffers primarily from the expectations that come from the author and their previous works. Paradoxically, The author also being the primary reason people will probably read it.”

About Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (UK: Russian: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, tr. Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Dostoevsky's body of works consists of 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as multiple of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature; this has resulted in Dostoevsky being looked upon as both a philosopher and theologian as well.

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