Diary of a Madman

One fine morning in Saint Petersburg, Major Kovalyov, a womaniser upstart, looks in the mirror and discovers that his nose is gone. That same morning, the barber Ivan Yakovlevich slices a roll of onion bread only to find out there is a nose tucked inside the crumb. This is the grotesque premise of T......more

I had never read Gogol but after reading this collection, I became an absolut fan. It contains one short story from the collection "Evenings On a Farm Near Dikanka", one from "Mirgorod" collection and 6 from the editorial cycle "Tales of St. Petersburg. The latter are absolutly magnificent, as is th......more

I am well aware that this book is worth more than three stars in a lot of people's eyes but i freely admit it's a me issue. The great Russians do something for other people that they don't do for me. Perhaps i am too Anglophile in my tastes and my outlook. I knew that Gogol is considered a genius an......more

The comedy in several of these stories was a little too broad for my taste, but "The Overcoat" (which I'd read before) remains a favorite, and I was tickled by the breadth and variety of small-town machinations and animosities chronicled in the tale of two Ivans, "The Government Inspector," and othe......more