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  • Published: 10 January 2006
  • ISBN: 9780140449075
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $26.00

Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector, & Selected Stories




The best of Gogol in a single volume - his most famous drama and the most brilliant of his short stories.

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.

  • Published: 10 January 2006
  • ISBN: 9780140449075
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $26.00

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the authors

Nikolai Gogol

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are known for their highly-acclaimed translations of Dostoevsky, Gogol ad Tolstoy. Their translation of The Brothers Karamazov won America's prestigious PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize.