Author: Gogol
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publication Date: 2 April 2024
Pages: 224
Format: eBook - PDF
Genre: Classics / Short Stories
Source: ARC via Edelweiss
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 Ukrainian countryside. Together, they reveal Gogol's marvelously 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.
And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon was a delightful collection of some of Gogol's best known short stories. Some I liked more than others, as will always be the case in an anthology of this nature, but all had something interesting to offer. If you have read and enjoyed Gogol's longer-form works, you should definitely also check out these short stories. Or, if you are new to his writing, the short stories are a good place to start to get a feel for his style. I am giving this book 4.5 stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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