“People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth,well known to all intelligent people.”
This book was my first ride through Dostoievski books, and I couldn’t have started in a better way.
In October of 1866, the editors put Dostoivesky under pressure to deliver a novel by the end of the year, otherwise Dostoievsky wouldn’t get paid for 9 years for his, already published, books. So, he wrote The Gambler in just little over 20 days.
Alexei Ivanovitch is a young tutor working for a Russian family, that currently are in the imaginary city of Roulettenbad, in Germany.
Alexei is in love with his employer’s stepdaughter, Polina, and tries to demystify the reason of why Polina always asks him to play the roulette claiming that she needs money urgently.
Dostoievsky writes this book as if a Diary and we fall to Alexei’s life with any backstory or introduction, which it’s confusing at first to follow. As we read, we become more familiarized with the characters and it becomes easier to follow everything situation as well the characters.
There’s a strong criticism towards the Russian society’s addiction to gambling and towards the French society’s ambition to be above the rest of Europe. Since the author struggled to overcome his gambling addiction, he portrayed in detail the world of gamblers, crooks, games, gambles and everything related to a gambling addict’s mind, that lead soe critics to believe that this novel has some autobiographic aspects in it.
This novel is full of sarcastic humour, that I didn’t expect, specially coming from the character Grandmother.
The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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