The Gambler and Other Stories is Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s collection of one novella and six short stories reflecting his own life – indeed, ‘The Gambler’, a story of a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian General, was written under a strict deadline so he could pay off his roulette debts.

Accused of political subversion as a young man, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp — a horrifying experience from which he developed this astounding semi-autobiographical memoir of a man condemned to ten years of servitude for murdering his wife.