The Gambler is a short novel following Alexei Ivanovich, a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general who is indebted to the Frenchman Des Grieux and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay his debt. The story reflects Dostoyevsky"s own addiction to roulette. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer and philosopher whose literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia.