The Gambler's Wife: Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoevsky

As Fyodor Dostoevsky put it, she was “the only woman who understood him.” Now, for listeners, there is a chance to come closer to that understanding. In the autumn of 1866, the twenty-year-old stenographer Anna Snitkina submitted an application for a job with the writer she admired—Fyodor Dostoevsky. Snitkina, who considered herself “a girl of the sixties,” grew up during the first waves of Russia’s feminist movement, and Dostoevsky—a former radical turned major literary figure—struck her with his books. But in a face-to-face meeting, Anna saw not a legend, but a man: unhappy, broken, worn out, suffering from epilepsy, and dependent on gambling. Concerned for him, she gradually became his confidante, his first reader and closest conversation partner—then his wife, and ultimately his business partner. The audiobook “The Gambler’s Wife” offers a fresh perspective on the story of Anna Dostoevskaya. Drawing on diaries, letters, and other archival materials, Andrew D. Kaufman, Professor of Slavic Languages and Russian Literature, tells the story of one of the most dramatic and captivating marriages in the history of letters.