The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“A superb new translation” ( The New Yorker ) of stories that allow readers to experience the unmistakable genius of a writer who paved the way for Dostoevsky and Kafka. When Nikolai Gogol left his Ukrainian village in 1828 to seek his fortune in St. Petersburg, he began composing these marvelous stories—tales that combine the wide-eyed, credulous imagination of the peasant with the sardonic social criticism of the city-dweller. Collected here are Gogol’s finest tales—from the demon-haunted “St.