The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor, Alexei Ivanovich. The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of him. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman de Griers and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay only a small amount of his debt. Upon learning of the illness of his wealthy aunt, Grandmother , he sends streams of telegrams to Moscow and awaits the news of her demise. His expected inheritance will pay his debts and gain Mademoiselle Blanche de Cominges s hand in marriage. It is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man s exhilarating and destructive addiction, a compulsion that Dostoevsky knew intimately from his own experience. In the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of his character, Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national character. The Gambler was written under the pressure of crushing debt. Dostoevsky completed the novel under a strict deadline to pay off gambling debts.