The House of the Dead [Notes from a Dead House]: The Gambler

**Translated by Constance Garnett with an introduction by Anthony Briggs.**

Dostoevsky's fascination for mental breakdown and violence (20 murders in his four main novels) was based on his own life, and these two unmistakably autobiographical works bear this out.

*The House of the Dead* is fiction, but based on his four years in a Siberian prison. An educated upper-class man is condemned to live among criminals and brutal guards, with arbitrary punishments, lousy food, disgusting living conditions, hard toil and many floggings. Somehow he avoids bitterness and recrimination; faith in humanity survives. With its breadth of characterisation, acute sense of detail and strong narrative interest, this work can still shock, entertain and inspire.

In *The Gambler* we see the Russian community in a German spa town. Drawn to the casino, Alexey becomes obsessed with roulette. In a gripping story, full of psychological interest, his growing mania eclipses even his interest in Polina, a heroine of demonic and vibrant sexuality. Dostoevsky himself was rescued from a similar gambling obsession by the young stenographer who took down this work at his dictation and married him soon afterwards.