Alex and Emma - Preface
First Chapter
Photograph of Fyodor Dostoevsky taken in 1876. Image online courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
One had to come to terms with it...
To look at his gambling passion as a disease
for which there was no cure.Anna Dostoevsky
Reminiscences
It was the end of September, 1866, and Fyodor Dostoevsky was in serious trouble.
Desperate for money the prior year, he had made a bad bargain with a rogue publisher. In exchange for an advance on an unwritten novel, Dostoevsky had agreed to give Fyodor Stellovsky the rights to all his future works for a period of ten years if he could not deliver the new book by November 1, 1866.
The novel - eventually called The Gambler - was due in thirty days. Dostoevsky had yet to write the first word.
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