The Gambler and The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In The Gambler and The Double, Fyodor Dostoyevsky delves into the volatile inner lives of men at the edge of psychological collapse. In The Gambler, drawn from the author’s own harrowing experiences, we follow Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor whose obsessive fixation with roulette mirrors his descent into emotional chaos and romantic delusion.

The Double, one of Dostoyevsky’s earliest and most haunting works, portrays the unraveling mind of Yakov Golyadkin, a low-ranking civil servant whose life is thrown into disarray by the sudden appearance of his uncanny doppelgänger. Both stories confront themes of identity, compulsion, and alienation, offering stark portraits of men who struggle—and fail—to reconcile their desires with the rigid confines of society.