Based on a true episode in literary history - the strange circumstances that led to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky to write his novel The Gambler A young woman, Anna (Jodhi May, The House of Mirth), in desperate need of money, takes a job as stenographer for Dostoyevsky (Michael Bambon, Gosford Park) -forty-five, epileptic, and in debt. The terms of her employment are extraordinary - she must stay at his apartment during the next month while he dictates a new novel to her. As the novel unfolds, Anna goes through a passage of discovery, a shedding of innocence and convention as she comes face to face with her own eroticism.