And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon: Essential Stories by Nikolai Gogol

This collection is a dazzling mix of absurdity, satire and humanity – from the surreal horror of “The Nose” to the bleak dignity of “The Overcoat” and the tragicomic “Diary of a Madman.” Alongside lesser‑known tales of provincial life, Gogol’s stories cut through bureaucracy, vanity and loneliness to expose the beauty and despair of human existence.

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.

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