This book cover illustration was created for Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Gambler. It was the first book by Dostoevsky I ever read, and I was surprised by how easily I got into it. The characters are all wonderfully compelling, and the situations they find themselves in can become so absurd that I actually found myself laughing out loud on the tube.

Gambling is at the heart of the story, and it affects almost all of the main characters in one way or another. I was particularly interested in how differently this obsession manifests itself in each of them, from reckless behaviour and desperation to greed, pride and the constant hope of a big win.

For the cover, I imagined the aristocratic characters posing in all their splendour in front of the hotel where they stay, almost like a formal group portrait. Looming over them is a gigantic roulette wheel, turning the whole scene into a slightly absurd spectacle. I wanted the characters to appear confident and composed while making it clear that they are all, in one way or another, under the influence of the game. It was a lot of fun trying to capture that mixture of grandeur, absurdity and impending disaster.