The Gambler

A tutor in the household of a bankrupt Russian general plays roulette at a German spa on behalf of people who despise him, and discovers that the wheel is the only honest thing in his life. Dostoevsky wrote it in twenty-six days to beat a contract that would have cost him the rights to everything he had written; he hired a young stenographer to do it, and married her. He was himself in ruinous debt to the tables.