The story of The Gambler, one of Dostoevsky's most autobiographical novels, is narrated in diary form by the protagonist, a young tutor in the household of a Russian general residing in a German spa resort. Welcomed into the colorful court of parasites revolving around the now ruined general, the tutor is won over by the demon of gambling and becomes a professional risk-taker who impassively suffers wins and losses and accepts good and bad fortune with the same indifference, the same nobility, the same imperturbable calm. Although not as dark as some of Dostoyevsky's other works, The Gambler nevertheless offers a grim and psychologically probing picture of the fatal attractions of gambling. A compulsive gambler himself at a certain period of his life, Dostoyevsky wrote this novel with real authority.
