Product Description
Nikolai Gogol, an early 19th century Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist, created some of the most important works of world literature and is considered the father of modern Russian realism. Gogol satirized the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian Empire through the scrupulous and scathing realism of his writing, which would ultimately lead to his exile. Among some of his finest works are his short stories. Together in this collection are collected some of the best of these stories, they include the following: The Diary of a Madman, The Viy, The Mysterious Portrait, The Fair of Sorotchinetz, An Evening in May, Mid-Summer Evening, and The Carriage (The Calash). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Mostly Satisfied
The book was shipped to me very quickly and is in good condition; however, I would have liked to have known what other stories were included in the book ahead of time.

Excellent book
This book was a great, quick read. Highly recommended if you are a fan of classic literature and / or short stories.

Just as Advertised
The book is in great condition.It was just as they advertised.I would buy from them again.

Classic Russian Literature
I only became familiar with Gogol through references in the work of Philip Roth.After all, great writers should give their due to their predecessors.Five of Gogol's most celebrated short stories are included in this collection.While I can only classify myself as a fan of three of these stories, this collection is still worth purchasing.

"The Diary of a Madman" harkens Kafka-esque images of man versus isolation and the bureaucracy in the story of one man's sometimes humorous spiral into madness.Scorned in love and work, the main character retreats into an alternate reality."The Nose", the story of a runaway body part, possesses elements of Kafka's "Metamorphisis".A fiction that borders on absurdity can still be frightening.It brings to mind that the superficial image one presents in society is too important."The Overcoat", having themes of superficiality and prized possessions, is a peculiar tale.Taunted by his co-workers for the condition of his overcoat, the main character makes many sacrifices to replace his coat.To a point, the new overcoat becomes more of an obsession than it should.

While "The Carriage" and "Taras Bulba" are also included in the set, I do not believe they carry the same feeling as the other stories.To a degree, "Taras Bubla" almost seemed out of place in the set.The collection of short stories is enjoyable and highly recommended to lovers of literature.It brings the thought to mind of what other works of literature were hidden from American eyes by communism.

Translation is an act of interpretation
I translated the title story and two others in this collection for my students because none of the existing translations did Gogol justice--they ignored his sound play and sometimes simply altered or even eliminated things that didn't make sense. Gogol's stories are weird and hilarious--I tried to preserve the elements of language that make them brilliant. ... Read more

Product Description

Nikolai Gogol, Russia's greatest comic writer, is a literary enigma. His masterworks--"The Nose," "The Overcoat," The Inspector General, Dead Souls--have attracted contradictory labels over the years, even as the originality of his achievement continues to defy exact explanation.

Donald Fanger's superb new book begins by considering why this should be so, and goes onto survey what Gogol created, step by step: an extraordinary body of writing, a model for the writer in Russian society, a textual identity that eclipses his scanty biography, and a kind of fiction unique in its time.

Drawing on a wealth of contemporary sources, as well as on everything Gogol wrote, including journal articles, letters, drafts, and variants, Fanger explains Gogol's eccentric genius and makes clear how it opened the way to the great age of Russian fiction. The method is an innovative mixture of literary history and literary sociology with textual criticism and structural interrogation. What emerges is not only a framework for understanding Gogol's writing as a whole, but fresh and original interpretation of individual works.

A concluding section, "The Surviving Presence," probes the fundamental nature of Gogol's creation to explain its astonishing vitality. In the process a major contribution is made to our understanding of comedy, irony, and satire, and ultimately to the theory of fiction itself.

Customer Reviews (1)

Ukrainian life in 3, Taras Bulba in 1
This collection, from the late 1830s, gives four earlier tales, the rural and Ukrainian folk background of Gogol rather than his urban and bureaucratic satirical "Petersburg Tales." These four tales are uneven. I searched this out to read "Taras Bulba" after having found out about it in Jane Smiley's "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel" as one of the 101 examples she summarizes. As Smiley notes, the descriptions are often powerful.

But the novella's simple tale of Cossack slaughter, glory, gore, and revenge seems almost more like "lad lit" would have been circa 1840! Less sexual lust, although it's suggested, but lots of bloodlust. There's not a lot of nuance or subtlety, although you can easily picture the vivid backdrops and shouts and dust and panoplies. The supporting Jewish characters offer as an aside a fascinating depiction from the Christian side of how that minority managed to survive amidst so much prejudice and persecution; it gives a balance to the Yiddishkeit that so many Eastern European Jewish writers chronicled from within the ghettoes and shetls. Even if this is not the most complicated mini-saga, it's fleshed out enough to depict a time few of us know but a sentence or two about. Gogol would have made a great screenwriter if he had lived a century later. This tale begs to be re-made on the big screen.

The other stories: "The Old-World Landowners" pairs off a quarrelsome couple who somehow keep their affection beneath unendingly barbed banter; "Viy" starts off well in its depiction of rowdy seminarists, but the ghost tale that emerges failed to sustain itself. "The story of how Ivan Ivanovich quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich" becomes tedious. David Marganshack adds a helpful preface; his style of translation is rather mannered, in the echo of Constance Garnett perhaps, but the slightly musty air he evokes fits the fictional ambiance. All three of these show the softer side of Ukrainian folk, early 19c., and still convey, if not the most gripping of tales, the texture, conversational pace, and beliefs of the people Gogol memorializes from his own youth. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction; Fiction / Literary; Literary Criticism / Russian ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good, even if unfinished.
I enjoyed this book even though it is unfinished. It is considered by some to be a 'Classic' and it is easy to see why. The writing is superb and the humor is subtle. The plot is what really drives this story though. Very clever. The main character reminds me of a stereotypical used-car salesman - always plotting until the joke finally turns on him. I recommend it.

"What is the good of number 2? God loves a trinity." And readers relish novels with endings, something this one doesn't have.
"You are on the proper road for Manilovka, but Zamanilovka---well, there is no such place.The house you mean is called Manilovka because Manilovka is its name; but no house at all is called Zamanilovka.The house you mean stands there, on that hill, and is a stone house in which a gentleman lives, and its name is Manilovka; but Zamanilovka does not stand hereabouts, nor ever has stood.""So the travelers [Chichikov included] proceeded in search of Manilovka."In "an aureate world of ever-growing dreams and fantasies, [a]ll his thoughts were in awhirl, and on a carpet of future wealth his tumultuous imagination was weaving golden patterns, while ever in his ears were ringing the words, `towards you there will run rivers and rivers of gold."Thenceforth Chichikov, Paul Ivanovich, our featured protagonist herein, spends much of the time in this novel looking for landowners with lots of deceased peasants on their tax rolls.Says one landowner: "When the assessor last called upon me I could have wept; for, though those workmen of mine are dead, I have to keep on paying for them as though they were still alive."Chichikov "wanted the dead souls in order to acquire a better standing in society, since at present he possessed little landed property, and only a handful of serfs.""What will my children say?" he is fond of asking himself herein.By "buying" dead peasant serfs [without anyone having acknowledged that they were in fact deceased] from various landlords Chichikov hoped to appear wealthy, and thereby attempt to leverage such "property" for the sake of his children, which are but imaginary throughout this novel, but which drive Chichikov to make a future success of himself.

During the first 186 pages, Chichikov makes his rounds in a town and then gets run out of it.Then the remainder of the book, almost unconnected in spirit to the first part, details how Chichikov has some more ups and downs, albeit of a somewhat different nature.And then the book ends oddly, in the sense that there isn't much of an ending.

Gogol wrote a second half of this book, but it was "lost" by Gogol before he could publish it.Interestingly, Gogol wrote "Dead Souls" while he was abroad."This may explain why some of the novel just doesn't seem part and parcel of the story he is apparently trying to relate. Consider this interlude of introspection by the author:

"Ah, Russia, Russia, from my beautiful home in a strange land I can still see you!In you everything is poor and disordered and unhomely; in you the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerity's of nature which a yet more temerarious art has conquered; in you one beholds no cities with lofty, many-windowed mansions, lofty as crags, no picturesque trees, no ivy-clad ruins, no waterfalls with their everlasting spray and roar, no beetling precipices which confuse the brain with their stony immensity, no vistas of vines and ivy and millions of wild roses and ageless lines of blue hills which look almost unreal against the clear, silvery background of the sky.In you everything is flat and open; your towns project like points or signals from smooth levels of plain, and nothing whatsoever enchants or deludes the eye.Yet what secret, what invincible force draws me to you?Why does there ceaselessly echo and re-echo in my ears the sad song which hovers throughout the length and the breadth of your borders?""What is it you seek of me, O Russia?"

This is hardy the only such interlude, as well.In a way, thus, Gogol's story makes for a great short story, but having seemingly stretched it in length past 200 pages, by including such ruminations as just quoted and having Chichikov almost perform the same routine with a slew of landowners, Gogol expends less effortto wrap up his story.

Eventually, in frustration, a landowner gives Chichikov some advice:"No matter what may be said to the contrary, the body can never dispense with the soul.Why, then, will you not try to walk in the right way, and, by thinking no longer of dead souls, but only of your only living one, regain, with God's help, the better road?" It's an inclination a reader of this novel might admit to sharing, particularly after page 186 when the story seems primed for new developments, but what "new developments" that do occur are not that different or especially interesting.

One tells Chichikov herein: "Nature loves patience: always remember that.It is a law given her of God himself, who has blessed all those who are strong to endure."A novelist too ought to recognize that readers don't have an unlimited reserve of this quality.So, yes, this book has many fine aspects---asides on Russia and the Russian sensibility, some satire, comedic flourishes---but they don't sustain this novel.My apologies to all afficinados of Russian literature (who will probably enjoy this novel), but most others, I reckon, will find other Russian novels (by Bulgakov, Zamyatin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, etc.) far more enjoyable and interesting than this one. (08Jul) Cheers

Devastatingly funny: The satire that launched modern novel in Russia
Nikolai Gogol's Dead Soul launches the 'great Russian novel form' with a satire, so apt and so funny, that the novel remains as one of the most popular Russian text ever. Gogol's own personal life may have been a dire disaster, but as a novelist he stands next to only Tolstoy and Dostovesky, as short story writer only Chekov comes close to his fame, and mind you, he preceded them and their writing. He was, alongside Pushkin, one of the major early forces in Russian literary scene. Since all other major novelists from Russia have delved into tragedies and melodramas, going down to philosophical and religious questions, Dead Souls comes as a relief fun read, rather one of the funniest reads.

In Dead Souls, he provides a cast of unforgettable and hilarious characters in episodes that leave you reeling with laughter. The hero or the anti-hero Chichikov or Tchichikov drives from town to town, buying "dead souls" i.e. dead peasants, assuring landowners that this will benefit them as they would pay less tax on their workforce. The tax was based on census numbers, and since many peasants died between two census years, landowners ended up paying taxes on people who didn't exist. Chichikov's brilliant idea was to collect a long list of (dead) peasants he had bought, and use that for getting a estate for himself. The novel tells us a story after story of his meeting his landowners and getting his purchase by a mix of tact, sweet talk, and so on, each purchase is full of absurd and funny details.

Beyond the obvious laughters, the novel provides a very detailed description of Russia in early nineteenth century. The sketches of nature bring alive similes and metaphors that Gogol (who was a failed poet) uses remarkably well. While the observations related to people, customs, bureaucracy and Russia are full of brilliant wit, they in fact recreate a lively and throbbing world to us. The world as it was. The bureaucracy has not changed much since then. Nor have the quacks and hacks and cheats who make fortunes by buying and selling dubious things. Hence Dead Souls has this undying and translatable humor that will keep this book in publication forever.

I would rank Dead Souls alongside Three Men in a Boat, Catch 22, A House for Mr Biswas and The Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy as the novels that made me laugh the most. It has shades of Tolstoy in details it provides about rural life and rich landowners, shades of both Tolstoy and Dostovesky in pointing to certain moral issues (but that is at most an undertone) and maybe he was the one who influenced the style of his more famous successors. If you haven't read Gogol, you definitely need to pick him next. ... Read more

Product Description
Eric Bentley brings to the attention of Gogol's still growing American public not only a new version of Inspector, but three other dramatic works: The Marriage, Gamblers and A Madman's Diary, the last-named being Bentley's dramatization of a famous Gogol story. In a critical preface, Bentley finds all four works to be a Gogolian treatment of love - or the lack of love - and by the same token, thoroughly original works of dramatic art. Also includes a piece on Gamblers by the eminent Polish critic Jan Kott. ... Read more

Product Description
The Government Inspector, also known as The Inspector General, is a satirical play by the Russian playwright and novelist Nikolai Gogol, published in 1836 and revised for the 1842 edition. Based upon an anecdote allegedly recounted to Gogol by Pushkin, the play is a comedy of errors, portraying human greed, stupidity, and the deep corruption of powers in Tsarist Russia.

According to D.S. Mirsky, the play "is not only supreme in character and dialogue - it is one of the few Russian plays constructed with unerring art from beginning to end. The great originality of its plan consisted in the absence of all love interest and of sympathetic characters. The latter feature was deeply resented by Gogol's enemies, and as a satire the play gained immensely from it. There is not a wrong word or intonation from beginning to end, and the comic tensity is of a quality that even Gogol did not always have at his beck and call."

The dream-like scenes of the play, often mirroring each other, whirl in the endless vertigo of self-deception around the main character, Khlestakov, who impersonates the irresponsibility, the light-mindedness, the absence of measure. "He is full of meaningless movement and meaningless fermentation incarnate, on a foundation of placidly ambitious inferiority" (D.S. Mirsky). The publication of the play led to a great outcry in the reactionary press. It took the personal interference of Tsar Nicholas I to have the play staged, with Mikhail Shchepkin taking the role of the Mayor. (Quote from wikipedia.org)

About the Author

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809 - 1852)
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (April 1, 1809 - March 4, 1852) was a Ukrainian writer of Ukrainian ethnicity and birth. Nikolai Gogol was one of the first Ukrainian authors to criticize his ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great play, terrible edition
Gogol's Inspector General is a fantastic play.I teach this text in my Russian Literature class, and students respond well, find it both funny and tragic, and it is typically one of the most popular things we read in the course.I don't need to sell Gogol; Gogol sells himself and deserves to sit alongside the greats of any literary pantheon.

The issue is that this edition, as well as The Echo Library edition (which uses the same translation) is awful.The typeface and all that is fine, particularly in the Forgotten Books version, but it's full of typos and jacked up textual errors.For example, every time the Doctor's name is printed, it reads, "Hübner"This is pretty terrible, and as I said, it's the same in this edition and the Echo Library.You know, it's kind of like there's one pdf document with this translation, floating in space, and they just keep hitting print whenever a new order comes in, and so the typos and problems keep getting repeated.

Of course, there are no other recent editions of the play that are available at a reasonable price, and those that are available are typically in an out of print edition.So, if you want to read this great play, you're sort of stuck with this miserable translation and edition, but at least if you know going into your purchase that it needs to be proofread, maybe it won't make you as mad as it makes me. ... Read more

Product Description
Nikolai Gogol first published "Dead Souls" in 1842, and it is considered one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Despite supposedly completing the second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death, and the novel still ends in mid-sentence.

The first part of the novel was intended to represent the Inferno of the "Divine Comedy." Set against the backdrop of Russia, just after the war in 1812, the structure of the novel follows a circle. The main character, Chichikov, visits the estates of regional landowners in order to purchase "dead souls," which are actually serfs who had died between official censuses but who were still causing their landowners to be taxed, as property.

Chichikov's macabre mission to acquire "dead souls" is actually a complicated scheme to inflate his social standing, as the more serfs one possesses, the higher one's social standing rises. He hopes to collect the legal ownership rights to dead serfs as a way to appear wealthy and influential. Once he acquires enough dead souls, his plan is to retire to a large farm to enjoy his new position and social standing. Of course, in the tradition of Homer and Dante, life never seems to follow the best laid plans. ... Read more

Product Description
Hailed universally as Russia's finest comic writer, and by many as its greatest writer of prose, Nikolai creates a unique Ukranian world, from the darkest Gothic to folkloric levity.Here, this extraordinary countryside is revealed in all its variety in his first two collections of short stories.The only translation available of this cycle of stories, this edition captures fully the spirit and vigor of his important early work for the first time. ... Read more

Product Description
Jesse Zeldin provides in this volume a unique reading of Nikolai Gogol's life and works. Proceeding chronologically and concentrating almost exclusively on the fiction, Zeldin gives a critical commentary on Gogol's individual works, explaining how each relates to one central ethical and moral theme: the identification of beauty with reality. Zeldin traces Gogol's quest for beauty by exploring his individual literary works. He provides an excellent section on icons as giving clues to Gogol and devotes three chapters to Dead Souls, including a separate one on the digressions of that work. ... Read more

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This is a study of the works of Nilolai Gogol in light of their indebtedness to Baroque culture. It considers Gogol's entire works, including his letters, notebooks and drawings, as well as relevant secondary literature and examines sources of Baroque influence on him. ... Read more

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Thousand of volumes have been written in Europe and North America about Nickolai Gogol; but, only a few studies have dwelt on any length on the Ukrainian heritage of Gogol. ... Read more