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Books with author Nikolai Gogol

  • Dead Souls: “The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”

    Nikolai Gogol

    eBook (A Word To The Wise, April 23, 2014)
    Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on 31st March 1809 in present day Ukraine which was then the Russian Cossack village of Sorochyntsi. Nikolai's parents were relatively affluent; his mother's family were Polish landowners and his father, who wrote poetry in Ukrainian and Russian, was a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks. Nikolai had a good education and started writing as a teenager whilst still at school although did consider becoming an actor due to his formidable talent at mimicry. On leaving school he went to St Petersburg but found it hard getting any work either in the civil service or as an actor. He self published a romantic poem but it was critically savaged to the extent that he swore never to write poetry again and also considered emigrating to the US. Fortunately, he persevered with his writing and produced a series of stories about his home in Ukraine in a colloquial and whimsical style that captured many literary admirers including the esteemed poet Pushkin. Nikolai was eventually able to abandon his work teaching and produced powerful books brilliantly and savagely satirising the inequities of the Russian system and its corrupt bureaucracy. His creative talents declined in later years and he became heavily influenced by a sadistic fanatical priest and died semi insane on 4th March 1852. He remains the father of Russian realism as evidenced here by his classic 'Dead Souls'
  • A May Evening

    Nikolai Gogol

    language (, Jan. 4, 2017)
    This story comes from the unnamed story-teller (who was previously responsible for "The Fair at Sorochyntsi").In this tale, a young Cossack named Levko, the son of the mayor, is in love with Hanna. He comes to her house to talk about marriage and mentions that his father is not pleased with the idea, though he doesn't say anything directly and merely ignores him. As they are walking on the outskirts of the village, Hanna asks about an old hut with a moss-covered roof and overgrown apple trees surrounding it. He tells her the story of a beautiful young girl whose father took care of her after her mother died and loved her dearly. Eventually, he married another woman who she discovered was a witch when she cut the paw of a cat that tried to kill her and her stepmother appeared soon after with her hand bandaged. The witch had power over her father, however, and eventually she is thrown out of the house and throws herself into the nearby pond in despair. She reigns over a group of maidens who also drowned in the pond, but once, when she got a hold of the witch as she was near the pond, she turned into a maiden and the ghost of the young girl has been unable to pick her out of the group ever since, asking any young man she comes upon to guess for her.
  • Nikolai Gogol: The Complete Novels

    Nikolai Gogol

    language (WS, May 2, 2018)
    This book contains the complete novels of Nikolai Gogol in the chronological order of their original publication. - Taras Bulba - Dead Souls
  • Dead Souls

    Nikolai Gogol

    eBook (, Sept. 17, 2017)
    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.
  • Taras Bulba : By Nikolai Gogol - Illustrated

    Nikolai Gogol

    eBook (, Nov. 5, 2017)
    How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout Taras Bulba by Nikolai GogolTaras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol is set sometime between the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, Gogol’s epic tale recounts both a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles (led by the bold Taras Bulba of Ukrainian folk mythology) and the trials of Taras Bulba’s two sons. As Robert Kaplan writes "Taras Bulba has a Kiplingesque gusto . . . that makes it a pleasure to read, but central to its theme is an unredemptive, darkly evil violence that is far beyond anything that Kipling ever touched on. We need more works like Taras Bulba to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we face today in places like the Middle East and Central Asia.” And the critic John Cournos has noted, “A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic’s observation about Gogol: ‘Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life.’ But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost all of Gogol’s work his ‘free Cossack soul’ trying to break through the shell of sordid today like some ancient demon, essentially Dionysian. So that his works, true though they are to our life, are at once a reproach, a protest, and a challenge, ever calling for joy, ancient joy, that is no more with us. And they have all the joy and sadness of the Ukrainian songs he loved so much.”
  • Dead Souls: By Nikolai Gogol - Illustrated

    Nikolai Gogol

    eBook (, April 10, 2017)
    How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout Dead Souls by Nikolai GogolDead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The purpose of the novel was to demonstrate the flaws and faults of the Russian mentality and character. Gogol portrayed those defects through Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov (the main character) and the people whom he encounters in his endeavours. These people are typical of the Russian middle-class of the time. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne's Sentimental Journey), it is usually regarded as complete in the extant form. The first part of the novel was intended to represent a modern-day Inferno of the Divine Comedy.[citation needed] Gogol reveals to his readers an encompassing picture of the ailing social system in Russia after the war of 1812. As in many of Gogol's short stories, the social criticism of Dead Souls is communicated primarily through absurd and hilarious satire. Unlike the short stories, however, Dead Souls was meant to offer solutions rather than simply point out problems. This grander scheme was largely unrealized at Gogol's death; the work was never completed, and it is primarily the earlier, darker part of the novel that is remembered.
  • The Nose

    Nikolai Gogol

    Paperback (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, July 16, 2016)
    "The Nose" is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol written during his time living in St. Petersburg. During this time, Gogol's works were primarily focused on surrealism and the grotesque, with a romantic twist. Written between 1835 and 1836, "The Nose" tells the story of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own. "The Nose" was originally published in The Contemporary, a literary journal owned by Alexander Pushkin. The use of a nose as the main source of conflict in the story could have been due to Gogol's own experience with an oddly shaped nose, which was often the subject of self-deprecating jokes in letters. The use of iconic landmarks in the story, as well as the sheer absurdity of the story, has made "The Nose" an important part of St. Petersburg's literary tradition. "The Nose" is divided into three parts and tells the story of a Collegiate Assessor who wakes up without his nose. He later finds out that his nose has developed a life of its own, and has even surpassed the Collegiate Assessor in social rank. The short story showcases the obsession with social rank that plagued Russia after Peter the Great introduced the table of ranks. By allowing commoners to gain hereditary nobility through service to the state, a huge population was given the chance to move up in social status. This opportunity, however, also gave way to large bureaucracies, in which many of Gogol's characters worked.
  • A May Evening

    Nikolai Gogol

    (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, May 17, 2014)
    Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (31 March 1809 – 4 March 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer. Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque ("The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat," "Nevsky Prospekt"). His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls), leading to his eventual exile. The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", round out the tally of his best-known works. In 1831, he brought out the first volume of his Ukrainian stories (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka), which met with immediate success. He followed it in 1832 with a second volume, and in 1835 by two volumes of stories entitled Mirgorod, as well as by two volumes of miscellaneous prose entitled Arabesques. At this time Russian editors and critics such as Nikolai Polevoy and Nikolai Nadezhdin saw in Gogol the emergence of a Ukrainian, rather than Russian, writer, using his works to illustrate supposed differences between Russian and Ukrainian national characters, a fact that has been overlooked in later Russian literary history. The themes and style of these early prose works by Gogol, as well as his later drama, were similar to the work of Ukrainian writers and dramatists who were his contemporaries and friends, including Hryhory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko and Vasily Narezhny. However, Gogol's satire was much more sophisticated and unconventional. At this time, Gogol developed a passion for Ukrainian history and tried to obtain an appointment to the history department at Kiev University. Despite the support of Pushkin and Sergey Uvarov, the Russian minister of education, his appointment was blocked by a Kievan bureaucrat on the grounds that he was unqualified. His fictional story Taras Bulba, based on the history of Ukrainian cossacks, was the result of this phase in his interests. During this time he also developed a close and lifelong friendship with another Ukrainian, the historian and naturalist Mykhaylo Maksymovych.
  • The Nose: By Nikolai Gogol - Illustrated

    Nikolai Gogol

    Paperback (Independently published, July 25, 2017)
    How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 'The Nose' is considered one of Nikolai Gogol's most famous works, a bizarre story about a man's 'nose' that embodies the wizardry of his work. The Nose is universally hailed as one of Gogol’s classics. The Nose is a satirical story by Nikolai Gogol. Written between 1835 and 1836, it tells of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own. After disappearing from the Deputy Inspector's face, his nose shows up around town before returning to its proper place. Barber Ivan Yakovlevich finds a nose in his bread during breakfast. With horror he recognizes this nose as that of one of his regular customers, collegiate assessor Kovalyov. He tries to get rid of it by throwing it in the Neva River, but he is caught by a police officer. Dmitri Shostakovich's opera 'The Nose' first performed in 1930, is based on this story. A film based on this story was made by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker in 1963 and used pinscreen animation.
  • Taras Bulba and Other Tales

    Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

    eBook (, Sept. 13, 2020)
    Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol
  • Dead souls

    Nikolai GOGOL

    (J.M Dent, Jan. 1, 1948)
    Dead Souls (The Novel Library)
  • The Nose

    Nikolai Gogol

    Paperback (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Oct. 23, 2017)
    "The Nose" is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol written during his time living in St. Petersburg. During this time, Gogol's works were primarily focused on surrealism and the grotesque, with a romantic twist. Written between 1835 and 1836, "The Nose" tells the story of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own. "The Nose" was originally published in The Contemporary, a literary journal owned by Alexander Pushkin. The use of a nose as the main source of conflict in the story could have been due to Gogol's own experience with an oddly shaped nose, which was often the subject of self-deprecating jokes in letters. The use of iconic landmarks in the story, as well as the sheer absurdity of the story, has made "The Nose" an important part of St. Petersburg's literary tradition.