The Nose and Other Stories

Nikolai Gogols novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogols peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turnsor at oncefunny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature. These stories showcase Gogols vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogols characteristic obsessionscity crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguiseand a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fussos translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.