Description

No writer has captured the absurdity of the human condition as acutely as Nikolai Gogol. In a lively new translation by Oliver Ready, this collection contains his great classic stories – ‘The Overcoat’, ‘The Nose’ and ‘Diary of a Madman’ – alongside lesser known gems depicting life in the Russian and Ukrainian countryside. Together, they reveal Gogol’s marvelously skewed perspective, moving between the urban and the rural with painfully sharp humour and scorching satire.

Strikingly modern in his depictions of society’s shambolic structures, Gogol plunders the depths of bureaucratic and domestic banalities to unearth moments of dark comedy and outrageous corruption. Defying categorisation, the stories in this collection range from the surreal to the satirical to the grotesque, united in their exquisite psychological acuteness and tender insights into the bizarre irrationalities of the human soul.

Publisher Review

“Gogol’s prose works feature a fiendishly complex narrative structure. In his engaging new versions, Oliver Ready deploys a rich vocabulary. . . . Along the way, there is much to savour.” – Times Literary Supplement

“I wish I had written the story ‘The Overcoat’. The sensibility of that story is perfect . . . spontaneous and funny and also formally very experimental” – George Saunders

“One of the most profound, and influential, writers Russia has ever produced, he is also probably the funniest” – Guardian

“The greatest artist that Russia has yet produced” – Vladimir Nabokov