Potapyts – The Grandmother’s butler
Marfa – The Grandmother’s maid, “a forty-year-old maiden, red-cheeked but already beginning to go gray…”
Madame de Cominges (no dialog) – Assumed to be Mlle Blanche’s mother; called “Madame la Comtesse” by the servants.
The Little Prince (no dialog) – Companion to Mlle Blanche when it appears there may be some trouble with The General’s inheritance.
Fedosja (no dialog) – General’s nanny
Prince Nilski (no dialog)
Chapter 15
Albert (no dialog) – Army officer in Paris, Mlle Blanche’s lover
English translations
Fred Whishaw
C. J. Hogarth
Constance Garnett
Ivy Litvinov
Jessie Coulson
Jane Kentish
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Hugh Aplin
Ronald Meyer
Adaptations
The novel was the basis of a 1929 opera by Sergei Prokofiev, The Gambler.
Several films have been inspired by the book. The Great Sinner, a loose adaptation, starred Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner under the direction of Robert Siodmak in 1949. Le joueur, a 1958 french film adaptation by Claude Autant-Lara, starred by Gérard Philipe. A 1972 co-production of the USSR and Czechoslovakia by Lenfilm studio and Barrandov Studios, directed by Alexei Batalov, follows the book closely.
There are two movies based on Dostoevsky’s life during the time when he was writing the novel. The 1981 Soviet film, Twenty Six Days from the Life of Dostoyevsky and the Hungarian director Károly Makk’s 1997 film The Gambler.
A TV mini-series was broadcast on BBC in 1969, and rebroadcast by Masterpiece Theatre in the US.
A radio play version was aired by BBC Radio 4 in December 2010, written by Glyn Maxwell and directed by Guy Retallack.
A two-part modern-day adaptation, written by Dolya Gavanski (who also played “Polina”) and entitled The Russian Gambler, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as part of its Classic Serial series in November 2013 and re-broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in March 2018. The cast also included Ed Stoppard as Alexei.
