St. Petersburg 1860. The writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky meets Gusiev, a young terrorist being treated in a psychiatric hospital. Gusiev confesses that his comrades are planning to kill one of the Tsar’s relatives. The young man also gives Dostoevsky the address of Aleksandra, their leader. Dostoevsky must convince her to stop this attack. The writer is at his wits end, hounded by his creditors, under pressure to deliver his next book and plagued by frequent attacks of epilepsy. By day, with the help of Anna Grigoryevna, a young stenographer, he dictates “The Gambler”. At night he continues his desperate search for the terrorist group.