This is a new translation from the original Russian manuscript of Gogol's collection "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka"". This edition contains an Afterword by the Translator, a timeline of Gogol's life and works and an Index of Gogol's individual works. A collection of short stories set in the Ukrainian countryside, this work is infused with local folklore, traditions, and supernatural elements. Gogol's vivid characters and picturesque landscapes reflect his deep appreciation for his homeland's spirit. The stories are presented as being related by a fictional beekeeper. Sorochinskaya fair The evening before Ivan Kupala May Night, or the Drowned Woman The Lost Letter Christmas Eve Terrible revenge Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt An Enchanted place
"In the autumn of 1831, some easter from the Poltava province issued a book under the tantalizing title "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka". The simple-hearted villager, as if in a frightened way, recommended to the enlightened public four fantastic stories allegedly told at gatherings in his modest hut. "This is real gaiety, sincere, unconstrained, without cheating, without being stiff. In some places, what poetry! What sensitivity!"--So welcomed the new book Pushkin. He knew that, under the mask of an old farmer, a twenty-two-year-old writer is hiding, happily inventing and colorful characters (daring dudes, dazzling marvels, stubborn old men, angry women, mermaids, witches, devils - in a word, all sorts of people and nonhumans), and funny storytellers, and the collector himself invariably "truthful" nonsense - Rudy Pank. Nowadays the name of the writer "Evenings ..." is known to all, in 1831, very few knew him. But among them were two great poets - Zhukovsky ..." --Vasha Kniga
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.
In addition to examining the aesthetics of the Russian writer's first novel, Putney (Slavic languages and literature, U. of North Carolina- Chapel Hill) explores the traditions of speculation into the devil found in Orthodox theology, medieval Russian literature, and East Slavic folklore. He also considers the evolution of Gogol's demonic idiom and its relationship to those received traditions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This two-volume edition at last brings all of Gogol's fiction (except his novel Dead Souls) together in paperback. Volume one includes Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, as well as 'Nevsky Prospekt' and 'Diary of a Madman'.
Fresh, stylish new translations of Gogol's greatest short stories collected in a beautiful edition 'One of the most profound, and influential, writers Russia has ever produced, he is probably also the funniest' Guardian 'The most morally complete writer: baffled, outraged, reverent, mock-didactic, mocking, all at once. He honours life by feeling no one way about it' GEORGE SAUNDERS No writer has captured the absurdity of the human condition as acutely as Nikolai Gogol. In a lively new translation by Oliver Ready, this collection contains his great classic stories - 'The Overcoat', 'The Nose' and 'Diary of a Madman' - alongside lesser known gems depicting life in the Russian and Ukranian countryside. Together, they reveal Gogol's marvellously skewed perspective, moving between the urban and the rural with painfully sharp humour and scorching satire. Strikingly modern in his depictions of society's shambolic structures, Gogol plunders the depths of bureaucratic and domestic banalities to unearth moments of dark comedy and outrageous corruption. Defying categorisation, the stories in this collection range from the surreal to the satirical to the grotesque, united in their exquisite psychological acuteness and tender insights into the bizarre irrationalities of the human soul. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) was born in Ukraine and moved to St Petersburg after his studies in 1828 to work, at first, in various government departments. His first collection of stories, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831), brought him widespread fame, and he went on to write further collections of stories, as well as the play The Government Inspector. The first part of his great, and only, novel Dead Souls appeared in 1842. In his later life he was increasingly tormented both physically and psychologically and he repeatedly burned his manuscripts, including the second part of Dead Souls. After the final burning in February 1852, he stopped eating and died in great pain ten days later.
Author, dramatist and satirist, Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) deeply influenced later Russian literature with his powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty beaurocracy and base corruption. This volume includes both his most admired short fiction and his most famous drama. A biting and frequently hilarious political satire, The Government Inspector has been popular since its first performance and was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest Russian play every written. The stories gathered here, meanwhile, range from comic to tragic and describe the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers. They include Diary of a Madman, an amusing but disturbing exploration of insanity; Nevsky Prospect, a depiction of an artist besotted with a prostitute; and The Overcoat, a moving consideration of poverty that powerfully influenced Dostoevsky and later Russian literature.
