The Gambler

A gambler himself, both at the gaming tables and in life, Fyodor Dosteyevsky's The Gambler was completed in time to keep the author's debts from catching up to him. Had he not met the deadline, Dostoyevsky's work for the next nine years would be published without a cent heading in the writer's direction; luckily, this novella was finished before the due date (with the help of a stenographer whom he would later marry) and would go on to become much adapted into films and even an opera. Dostoyevsky's first-hand experience with the gaming tables of Europe would color the novella with a certain realism that is impossible to forget.