Gogol Three Plays


Book Description

This collection contains Gogol's three completed plays The Government Inspector, which satirises a corrupt society was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest play in the Russian language and is still widely studied in schools and universities: "I resolved to gather into one heap everything that was bad in Russia which I was aware of at that time, all the injustices being perpetrated in those places, and in those circumstances that especially cried out for justice, and tried to hold them all up to ridicule, at one fell swoop." (Nikolai Gogol) Marriage is a comedy about the business of matchmaking and matrimony; The Gamblers is an exoriating piece about the excesses of the Moscow aristocracy. "Two and two make five, if not the square root of five, and it all happens quite naturally in Gogol's world... Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange" (Vladimir Nabokov)




Gogol


Book Description

These translations of Gogol's plays restore the vitality of Gogol's language and humour, finally allowing his dramatic art to speak directly to Western readers, directors, actors and theatre-goers.




The Gamblers and Marriage


Book Description

Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol, the Moliere of Russia, was born in the sunny Ukraine in March, 1809, and died in Moscow forty-three years later. The author of Russia's famous national comedy, The Inspector-General, Gogol was the first dramatist of his country to write plays on the Western European model, even as his friend Pushkin was the first Russian poet to introduce the Western strain into the literature of his people. In the comedy Marriage, which Gogol began in 1832 as The Wooers and completed only in 1842 in its final form, the author attacked in his inimitable manner the modern problem of escape from marriage. By unexcelled, mirth-provoking characterization, and with delightful irony, Gogol satirized the fear of marriage inherent in the soul of the average man. The Gamblers is a masterpiece of dramatic suspense, and has been hailed in Europe as a model for plot development. With a few strokes, Gogol drew this set of characters whose purpose in life is so similar, yet whose manners are so individual. When The Gamblers was first produced in Berlin, it made a striking impression on the audience whose mystification was complete to the very end.




Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector, & Selected Stories


Book Description

Author, dramatist and satirist, Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852) deeply influenced later Russian literature with his powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty beaurocracy 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 every 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.




The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol


Book Description

Using, or rather mimicking, traditional forms of storytelling Gogol created stories that are complete within themselves and only tangentially connected to a meaning or moral. His work belongs to the school of invention, where each twist and turn of the narrative is a surprise unfettered by obligation to an overarching theme. Selected from Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, Mirgorod, and the Petersburg tales and arranged in order of composition, the thirteen stories in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogolencompass the breadth of Gogol's literary achievement. From the demon-haunted “St. John's Eve ” to the heartrending humiliations and trials of a titular councilor in “The Overcoat,” Gogol's knack for turning literary conventions on their heads combined with his overt joy in the art of story telling shine through in each of the tales. This translation, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is as vigorous and darkly funny as the original Russian. It allows readers to experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who paved the way for Dostevsky and Kafka.




The UN Inspector


Book Description

Freely adapted from Gogol's The Government Inspector 'This is one of the cleverest adaptations of a classic play I have ever seen true to the spirit of Gogol's original, The Government Inspector, yet updating it with elegance and scabrous wit to the 21st century. Like Gogol before him, Farr comes up with some wonderful moments of farcical black comedy. Hilariously funny and chilling.' Daily Telegraph 'David Farr has written and directed an ingenious update.' Independent The UN Inspector premiered at the National Theatre, London, in June 2005.




The Nose and Other Stories


Book Description

Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogol’s peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turns—or at once—funny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature. These stories showcase Gogol’s vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogol’s characteristic obsessions—city crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguise—and a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fusso’s translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.




Inspector and 3 Other Plays


Book Description

Eric Bentley brings to the attention of Gogol's still growing American public not only a new version of Inspector, but three other dramatic works: The Marriage, Gamblers and A Madman's Diary, the last-named being Bentley's dramatization of a famous Gogol story. In a critical preface, Bentley finds all four works to be a Gogolian treatment of love - or the lack of love - and by the same token, thoroughly original works of dramatic art. Also includes a piece on Gamblers by the eminent Polish critic Jan Kott.




A Gentleman in Moscow


Book Description

The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers Soon to be a Showtime/Paramount+ series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov From the number one New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel 'A wonderful book' - Tana French 'This novel is astonishing, uplifting and wise. Don't miss it' - Chris Cleave 'No historical novel this year was more witty, insightful or original' - Sunday Times, Books of the Year '[A] supremely uplifting novel ... It's elegant, witty and delightful - much like the Count himself.' - Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year 'Charming ... shows that not all books about Russian aristocrats have to be full of doom and nihilism' - The Times, Books of the Year On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a life without luxury be the richest of all? A BOOK OF THE DECADE, 2010-2020 (INDEPENDENT) THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A DAILY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF BILL GATES'S SUMMER READS OF 2019 NOMINATED FOR THE 2018 INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS WEEK AWARD




The Namesake


Book Description

A young man born of Indian parents in America struggles with issues of identity from his teens to his thirties.