費奧多爾·米哈伊洛維奇·陀思妥耶夫斯基

“What I am writing now is a tendentious thing,” Dostoyevsky wrote to a friend in connection with his first outline for The Devils. “I feel like saying everything as passionately as possible. (Let the nihilists and the Westerners scream that I am reactionary!) To hell with them. I shall say everything to the last …

The Gambler brilliantly captures the strangely powerful compulsion to bet that Dostoyevsky, himself a compulsive gambler, knew so well. The hero rides an emotional roller coaster between exhilaration and despair, and secondary characters such as the Grandmother, who throws much of her fortune away at the gaming …