Standard Ebooks

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler

Norbert Jacques

Description

Edgar Hull is a gambling at a Munich club when he suddenly and mysteriously starts losing, seemingly on purpose. He walks away from the table in a confused dazed and deep in debt—he can’t understand why he played that way.

Little does Edgar know that his opponent in the game was the mysterious hypnotist, master of disguise, and archvillain who calls himself Dr. Mabuse, and that Edgar was merely his latest victim. When Inspector von Wenk, a state attorney, arrives to question Hull, the plot quickly turns to murder—and worse—as Mabuse continues his reign of mesmeric terror on Munich’s gambling class. But Dr. Mabuse isn’t just in it for the money—his aim is something far greater.

Dr. Mabuse, along with Fu Manchu and Fantômas, is one of the earliest examples of the “supervillain” archetype popular in modern media like the Bond series or comic books. He’s a seemingly-invincible chameleon with an eerie, inexplicable power over people; he seems to be controlling a shadowy organization with a greater, more sinister, goal; and he’s always one step ahead of the law.

Jacques wrote Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler with the aim of criticizing the extravagance of German post-war society. This makes the novel a kind of time capsule of the era, playing on the gamut of contemporary interests and fears including hypnotism, psychoanalysis, decadence, and the question of whether a society that permitted World War I is a society that could be redeemed.

The novel was successful in its day, but was made even more famous by the Fritz Lang silent movie of the same name, which was so popular with both audiences and critics that it almost completely overshadowed the novel.

Read free

This ebook is thought to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. It may still be under copyright in other countries. If you’re not located in the United States, you must check your local laws to verify that this ebook is free of copyright restrictions in the country you’re located in before accessing, downloading, or using it.

Download for ereaders

Read online

A brief history of this ebook

  1. Finish metadata and initial publication

  2. Clean

  3. [Editorial] Remove scare quotes from names

  4. [Editorial] Add paragraph break to pseudo-dialogue

  5. Fix typos

More details

Sources

Transcriptions

Page scans

Improve this ebook

Anyone can contribute to make a Standard Ebook better for everyone!

To report typos, typography errors, or other corrections, see how to report errors.

If you’re comfortable with technology and want to contribute directly, check out this ebook’s GitHub repository and our contributors section.

You can also donate to Standard Ebooks to help fund continuing improvement of this and other ebooks.