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 "Diary of Madman," these Petersburg Tales paint a critical yet hilarious portrait of a city riddled with pomposity and self-importance, masterfully juxtaposing 19th-century realism with madcap surrealism, and combining absurdist farce with biting satire.

In these tales Gogol guides us through the elegant streets of St Petersburg, the city erected by force and ingenuity on the marshes of the Neva estuary. Something of the deception and violence of the city's creation seems to lurk beneath its harmonious facade, however, and it confounds its inhabitants with false dreams and absurd visions - 'nothing is what it seems!' warns Gogol. St Petersburg is also the setting for Marriage, Gogol's satire on courtship and cowardice. Finally, for The Government Inspector, indisputably Russia's greatest comedy, we move to the provinces although even here St Petersburg's preoccupation with status and appearances makes its presence felt.

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 "Diary of Madman," these Petersburg Tales paint a critical yet hilarious portrait of a city riddled with pomposity and self-importance, masterfully juxtaposing 19th-century realism with madcap surrealism, and combining absurdist farce with biting satire.

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 "Diary of Madman," these Petersburg Tales paint a critical yet hilarious portrait of a city riddled with pomposity and self-importance, masterfully juxtaposing 19th-century realism with madcap surrealism, and combining absurdist farce with biting satire.

From the acclaimed translators of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov comes this superb translation of the short fiction of Nikolai Gogol, the nineteenth-century Russian master. Collected here are Gogol's finest tales - stories which combine the wide-eyed, credulous imagination of the peasant with the sardonic social criticism of the city dweller - allowing readers to experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who paved the way for Dostoevsky and Kakfa. All Gogol's most memorable creations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know. The wholly unique blend of satire and realism that Gogol crafted established his reputation as one of the most daring and inventive writers of his time.

Издание на английском языке. A stranger arrives in a Russian backwater community with a bizarre proposition for the local landowners: cash for their "dead souls," the serfs who have died in their service. Gogol's comic masterpiece offers a vast and satirical painting of 19th-century Russia. A work of great symbolism, it continues to inspire 21st-century authors and readers.

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls" - deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humour, and delight in human oddity and error.

Russia in the 1840s. There is a stranger in town, and he is behaving oddly. The unctuous Pavel Chichikov goes around the local estates buying up 'dead souls'. These are the papers relating to serfs who have died since the last census, but who remain on the record and still attract a tax demand. Chichikov is willing to relieve their owners of the tax burden by buying the titles for a song. What he does not say is that he then proposes to take out a huge mortgage against these fictitious citizens and buy himself a nice estate in Eastern Russia. Will he get away with it? Who will rumble him? Does this narrative contain a deeper message about Russia itself or the spiritual health of humanity? There is much interest and some suspense in considering these issues, but the real pleasure of this story lies elsewhere. It is an enjoyable comic romp through a retarded part of a backward country, a picaresque series of grotesque portraits, situations and conversations described with Gogolian humour based mainly on hyperbole. This is, quite simply, the funniest book in the Russian language before the twentieth century.

Russia's great nineteenth-century satirical absurdist shows what happens when a man wakes up with his nose missing, and illustrates the folly of boasting. 'Strangely enough, I mistook it for a gentleman at first. Fortunately I had my spectacles with me so I could see it was really a nose.' With this pair of absurd, comic stories Gogol indulges his imagination and delights readers. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852). Gogol's works available in Penguin Classics are Dead Souls, Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector & Selected Stories and The Night Before Christmas.

Un episode imaginaire de la lutte des cosaques contre les Polonais dans l'Ukraine du XVIIe siecle. Le vieux Taras Boulba, cosaque des temps heroiques, apres avoir initie a la guerre ses deux fils, perd l'aine sous les coups de l'ennemi et tue de ses propres mains le cadet qui, amoureux d'une Polonaise catholique, a trahi sa famille et la foi orthodoxe. A la suite de deux grandes batailles, Taras Boulba est fait prisonnier et meurt brule vif sur le bucher. La reussite du recit, ecrit par Gogol quand il a a peine vingt-six ans, tient a ce que le souffle epique y cotoie sans cesse la truculence quasi rabelaisienne de la fete, des beuveries cosaques, mais aussi l'evocation poetique d'une Ukraine primitive.

Предлагаем вниманию читателей поэму в прозе великого русского писателя Н.В.Гоголя "Мертвые души", рассказывающую о похождениях Павла Ивановича Чичикова, авантюриста, скупающего у провинциальных помещиков "мертвые души". Перед читателем предстает панорама русской провинциальной жизни середины XIX века.

Der Newskijprospekt Aufzeichnungen eines Wahnsinnigen Die Nase Der Mantel Romantische Phantastik und sozialkritischer Realismus kennzeichnen jene beruhmten vier Erzahlungen Nikolaj Gogols, die als ›Petersburger Novellen‹ in die Literaturgeschichte eingegangen sind. Bereits der Titel zeigt an, da? man den Meister der Groteske an einem ungewohnten Schauplatz findet: seiner virtuosen Darstellung der bauerlichen und provinziellen Welt in ›Die Toten Seelen‹ folgt jetzt die Beschreibung der Grostadt als Symbol der Moderne. In der Novelle ›Der Newskijprospekt‹ (1835) schildert Gogol die sich im Lauf des Tages verandernde Physiognomie der legendaren Prachtstra?e Petersburgs und lat die Diskrepanz zwischen mondan-gluckversprechendem Schein und seelenloser Wirklichkeit offenkundig werden. Mag das Absurde in den tagebuchartigen ›Aufzeichnungen eines Wahnsinnigen‹ (1935) noch durch den fortschreitenden Proze? der geistigen Verwirrung des Titu larrates Popristschin motiviert erscheinen, so ist es in der beruhmten Novelle ›Die Nase‹ (1836/42) bereits zur inhumanen "Realitat" geworden. Den Abschlu? der ›Petersburger Novellen‹ bildet ›Der Mantel‹ (1842), Gogols reifstes Meisterwerk, "eine Groteske, in der sich die Mimik des Lachens mit der Mimik der Trauer abwechselt" (B. Ejchenbaum).

A mysterious stranger named Chichikov arrives in a small provincial Russian town and proceeds to visit a succession of landowners, making each of them an unusual and somewhat macabre proposition. He offers to buy the rights to the dead serfs who are still registered on the landowner's estate, thus reducing their liability for taxes. It is not clear what Chichikov's intentions are with the dead serfs he is purchasing, and despite his attempts to ingratiate himself, his strange behaviour arouses the suspicions of everyone in the town. A biting satire of social pretensions and pomposity, Dead Souls has been revered since its original publication in 1842 as one of the funniest and most brilliant novels of nineteenth-century Russia. Its unflinching and remorseless depiction of venality in Russian society is a lasting tribute to Gogol's comic genius. Translated and annoted by Donald Rayfiled, Emeritus Professor of Russian at Queen Mary University of London. He has written extensively on Russian and Georgian literature and on Stalin and the secret police. He has translated works by Chekhov and Gogol.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of 'N', visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these 'souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov. Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

Nikolai Gogol was one of the great geniuses of nineteenth century Russian literature, with a command of the irrational unmatched by any writer before or since. His strange tales, though often read as forceful demands for social change, were displays of the fantasies of the human spirit. In this ideal marriage of subject and critic, Nabokov analyses his endlessly inventive compatriot, focusing on the masterpieces Dead Souls, The Overcoat and The Government Inspector. Misunderstood by his contemporaries, mishandled by theatre directors and ending his life mistreated by doctors - with medicinal leeches hanging from his exceptional nose - it took Nabokov to give Gogol, 'the oddest Russian in Russia', the critical biography he and his singular, brilliant work deserve.

Qui est cet homme dont la simple vue glace d'effroi tous les invites d'un mariage ? Pourquoi poursuit-il dame Catherine dans ses reves jusqu'a ce qu'elle se reveille en hurlant ? Quelles terrifiantes extremites peut atteindre une vengeance ? Dans la Russie des fiers Cosaques, Gogol nous entraine au plus profond du c?ur des hommes, la ou se dissimule le Mal.