Tales of Good and Evil
by Nicolai V. Gogol
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Nikolai Google was Ukrainian. Two of these stories take place in the Ukraine and four in Leningrad. They consist of macabre plots reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe combined with absurdist themes reminiscent of Kafka. One character in Leningrad wakes up one day to see that his nose has disappeared. Another character loses his life and becomes a ghost as a result of the theft of his new overcoat. Cossacks in the Ukraine fight demons. The stories are all great.
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585+ Works 28,944 Members
Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol was born in 1809 in the Ukraine. His father was an amateur playwright who had a small estate with a number of serfs. From the ages of 12 to 19, young Gogol attended a boarding school where he became known for his sharp wit and ability to amuse his classmates. After school he worked as a government clerk. He soon began show more writing memories of his childhood. His quaint depictions of the Ukrainian countryside marked his style and helped to make him famous. Gogol quickly gained fame and formed a friendship with the influential poet, Aleksandr Pushkin. Gogol is largely remembered for his realistic characterizations, his rich imagination, and his humorous style. His works include Mirgorod, a collection of short stories including Taras Bulba. Gogol's wit is evident in his short story, The Nose, where a man's nose wanders off around town in a carriage. Gogol's masterpiece is the novel Dead Souls. In this work, a swindler plots to buy from landowners their dead serfs. Towards the end of Gogol's life, his creative powers faded and he fled to Moscow. Here, he came under the power of a fanatical priest. Ten days before his death he burned some manuscripts of the second part of Dead Souls. He died of starvation in 1852, on the cusp of madness. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Anchor Books (120)
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- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 891.733 — Literature & rhetoric Literatures of other languages East Indo-European and Celtic literatures Russian and East Slavic languages Russian fiction 1800–1917
- LCC
- PZ3 .G558 .T — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction in English
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