Two small masterpieces in one volume. First, The Double, a surprisingly modern, nightmarish dream that foreshadows Kafka and Sartre. A minor clerk, Golyatkin, realizes the existence of a mysterious double - a man who has his name and his face and who gradually and relentlessly begins to displace him from his friends and colleagues. In the dilemma of the increasingly paranoid hero, Dostoevsky vividly renders the internal complexity of consciousness, a theme that will become a central work of his. Second, The Gambler, a remarkable psychological portrait of a young man's exhausting and destructive addiction, an impulse that Dostoevsky knew well - having once wagered his wife's ring - from personal experience. In the ruinous romantic escapades and gambling adventures of Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to gaze into the abyss of absolute risk, which he believed to be a fundamental part of the Russian national character.