Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevski was standing facing a firing squad just when an ukase from the czar commuted the penalty and sent him to forced labour in Siberia. He was going to be executed accused of being a socialist member conspiring against czar Nicholas I.

          Dostoyevski is considered a pioneer of psychological novel and teaches you something essential and necessary to one's own thoughts through his writings. When he was writing Crime and Punishment his editor refused the novel because it was too extense and obscure, so Dostoyevski didn’t get any money and he was in need of it. He hired a stenographer and dictated to her his novel The gambler in 26 days. Soon after he married Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, the stenographer. The gambler was published and had an immediate success and reported a good money to the couple.

    The gambler is based on Dostoyevski own experiences.The tale of the Russian general and his family wasting a lot of money not their fortune in Roulettenbad, somewhere in Germany, and the tutor of the general’s niece’s children, The tutor has fallen in love with the mother of the children, rather than with the niece of the general, and he is nearly desperate with what is happening. I won’t give more details about the plot summary, I only finish by saying that to come out from a casino a ruined one is the possibility all gamblers take into account before coming in but the emotion of risk overcome them.

            Thinking about the way he planned it to finish soon, to dictate the novel, and knowing it has been taken from his own experiencies, I do admire the genius he put in his literary works just to get money. There was no need to spend all days and all nights scribbling, although in complete consciousness, if it was a sacrifice. For some writers with a rich autobiograhical background it would be ideal to do the same Dostoyevski did and to hire a stenograph instead of working by themselves if thinking their main goal is the money they will get from the editor.