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

In the autumn of 1866, twenty-year-old stenographer Snitkina comes to work for the writer she has long admired. Together they work on the novel «The Gambler». Dostoevsky turns out to be not as she imagined: he is exhausted, suffers from epilepsy, burdened by debts, and obsessed with gambling. Gradually, Anna becomes his confidante and first reader. Later, she becomes his wife and eventually his business partner. Kaufman traces how the family lives amidst need, debts, and trials, as well as how the heroine takes on practical and publishing concerns, protecting her husband's literary work.