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Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector, & Selected Stories
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Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector, & Selected Stories
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Includes a selection of short fiction and famous dramas. This book includes stories ranging from comic to tragic and describes the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers.
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Description
Author, dramatist, and satirist, Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) deeply influenced later Russian literature with his powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty bureaucracy 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 ever 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.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780140449075
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 01 December 2005
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Contributors:
- Translated by Ronald Wilks
- Introduction by Robert Maguire
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 21.0mm
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 197.0mm
Weight: 273g
Pages: 368
About the Author
Gogol, Nikolay Vasilyevich (1809-52), Russian writer, whose plays, short stories, and novels rank among the great masterpieces of 19th-century Russian realist literature. Ronald Wilks has translated many Russian works of literature including, for Penguin, those of Gorky, Sologub, Tolstoy, and Pushkin, and most recently, three volumes of Chekhov's stories and his short novel, The Shooting Party. Robert A Maguire is Professor and Head of Department at Columbia University. He is the author of several books about Russian literature and the prize-winning translator of Petersburg by Andrei Bely (Indiana UP, 1979) and most recently, for Penguin, of Gogol's Dead Souls.
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