Petersburg Tales: New Translation: Newly Translated and Annotated / Includes the Diary of a Madman (Alma Classics Evergreens)

(Paperback)

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Written in the 1830s and early 1840s, these comic stories tackle life behind the cold and elegant faade of the Imperial capital from the viewpoints of various characters, such as a collegiate assessor who one day finds that his nose has detached itself from his face and risen the ranks to become a state councillor (The Nose), a painter and a lieutenant whose romantic pursuits meet with contrasting degrees of success (Nevsky Prospect) and a lowly civil servant whose existence desperately unravels when he loses his prized new coat (The Overcoat). Also including the Diary of Madman, these Petersburg Tales paint a critical yet hilarious portrait of a city riddled with pomposity and self-importance, masterfully juxtaposing nineteenth-century realism with madcap surrealism, and combining absurdist farce with biting satire.

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Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange. -- Vladimir Nabokov

Author Bio

Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) won fame as a short story writer, and in 1836, his satirical comedy The Government Inspector created such a furore that Gogol left Russia to settle in Rome, in self-imposed exile. Religious mania in his later years contributed to his early death in Moscow.