About The Book

"The Nose" (Russian: Нос Nos) 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 the grotesque and absurd, with a romantic twist.[1] 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.[2] 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.[2] 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.

About Author

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity. Russian and Ukrainian scholars debate whether or not Gogol was of their respective nationalities. 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.