The Government Inspector and Other Works

Nikolai Gogol, Keith Carabine, Constance Garnett

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781848706101
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Index: Literature

Gogol's works constitute one of Russian literature's supreme achievements, yet the nature of their brilliant originality, comic genius, and complex workings is difficult to summarize precisely. The Government Inspector, a perennial favourite on stage and screen, is considered a national institution in Russia, and Gogol's stories present us with one of the most marvellous worlds a writer has ever created. His quirky characters - the lowly official who imagines himself to be the King of Spain, the man committed to chase his nose around St. Petersburg, a whole village paralyzed at the prospect of being visited by an authority from the capital - are immortal. Although Gogol's fiction was commandeered by Russia's progressive critics as the work of an important social commentator, he was in many ways an arch-conservative, and there is a madcap strain in it that makes him a precursor of Kafka and absurdist drama.

Table of contents

• Contents
• General Introduction
• Introduction
• Select Bibliography
• Civil, Court and Military Ranks
• Evenings on a farm near Dikanka: Part One
• Evenings on a farm near Dikanka: Part Two
• Mirgorod [73]
• Petersburg Tales
• The Government Inspector
• Endnotes