The other day a voice beamed through the air and convinced me that I should write about books. So in case this is boring, don’t blame me. What prompted the advice were my mad ramblings about the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, best known for his masterpieces Crime & Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov. Let me provide some context.

Dostoyevsky was an artist in the truest sense. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, he saw a world plagued by disruptive new ideas, ranging from liberalism, socialism, nihilism, and communism, to just name a few. He witnessed the conflict between them, and the deep disconnect with traditional values passed down from the past. It was a time of civil strife, political violence, the hollowing out of spiritual life, with of course a damnation to poverty for most of the common folk. Sound relevant?

Dostoyevsky spent his life writing about these ideas, but instead of picking his favourite and advocating for it as strongly as he could, which is what we call propaganda, he would imbue the characters of his novels with these ideas, and let them fight and argue for a thousand pages in his mind, until, through the chaos, he would eventually root out the truth. I promise it gets more interesting.

It gets more interesting because Dostoyevsky was also crushingly addicted to gambling for almost ten years of his life. In the German gambling towns along the Rhine, he didn’t just lose all his money, eventually he put the publishing rights and revenue for anything he would write the next ten years on the line. His publisher Stellovsky only gave him four weeks to produce something, anything, to save his skin.

So Dostoyevsky sat down and got to work. Or in fact, he stood up, paced around the room in deep thought, and dictated the whole of The Gambler to one of Russia’s first stenographers, Anna Snitkina. At first she complained he spoke too rapidly, but eventually they settled on a rhythm, completed the novel just barely on time, giving Dostoyevsky a second chance at authorship.

Of course, he often needed insight into the psyche of his female characters. So, just four weeks after meeting Anna, he posed a curious hypothetical storyline. Picture an old painter, starstruck by a young woman called Anya. Could it ever be possible for the woman to fall in love with the painter, despite her being so much younger and of markedly different character. On he went: “Put yourself in her place for a moment. Imagine I am the painter, I confessed to you and asked you to be my wife. What would you answer?” The reply came swiftly and without a doubt: “I would answer that I love you and I will love you forever.” Four months later Anna Snitkina became Anna Dostoyevskaya.

They left Russia on a four-year-long honeymoon. Shortly before their departure, two creditors filed charges against Dostoyevsky related to unpaid gambling debts, and not long after he lost his wife’s belongings at the German roulette tables. Trusting her husband’s capacities as an author, but not as a particularly financially responsible person, she came up with an easy solution. Dostoyevsky handed over complete authority over the household’s finances, including publishing matters, to the point that Anna would negotiate with publishers for a better cut. She quickly freed her husband from his debts, helping him give up gambling for good.

As is only normal, their relationship was not without hiccups. In a moment of careless annoyance, Dostoyevsky complained how women could never set their mind to one thing with dedication, but instead fluttered around from one passion to the next. Determined to firmly prove her husband wrong as strongly as she could, Anna decided to pick up a new hobby, no matter the choice, from then on until her death, just to prove her point and show him how wrong he was. By the time of her passing, Anna had accrued one of the largest stamp collections in the country, and she is still regarded as one of the Russian founders of philately, the study of stamps and postal history.

I think they were happy.