The Nose and Other Stories

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

This is a compilation of nine short stories by Nikolai Gogol, of which many delve into the genre of magical realism/urban fantasy.

While there were some short stories I found quite endearing and quirky (Diary of a Madman, The Carriage, and The Nose), I largely felt that I'm not a reader who can appreciate Gogol's writing.

I noticed that Gogol enjoys giving us much context and character background when crafting out his stories, even going so far as to expand on his side characters in some of them. His writing is also extremely descriptive; he carefully crafts out a specific scene he has in mind that he wants readers to envision. While some may enjoy being completely immersed in the sights and sounds of old Russia (which I did like and appreciate sometimes), the writing itself felt a little dry to me and I found myself spacing out at times, especially while I was reading Rome (A Fragment). That one's definitely my least favourite of them all.

In short, I'd think Gogol's writing is generally a 'hit-or-miss' type. If you're someone who loves descriptive writing and blends of magical realism with a sprinkle of some darker gothic elements, then I'd highly recommend you check this out! If you're more like me: someone who prefers less rambliness and more straightforwardness, then it's probably better if you zoom in on some of his works in particular instead of reading all of them (I'd rec The Nose; it's kind of ridiculous, which is why I like it!).

Thank you to Columbia University Press and Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

It's unusual to find a literary anthology (that are not mysteries) from over 100 years ago. These are a little uneven in quality, but the author is well regarded for his longer works. This may best for speculative fiction and even scifi fans. Those seeking straight literary fiction should probably move on.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

A collection of classic stories, many of them of a fantastical nature, all of them with a farcical and fatalistic bent.

The nine stories here collected have been newly translated from the Russian, and include some of Nikolai Gogol's most famous stories (Diary Of A Madman, The Overcoat and the titular The Nose). Gogol wrote these stories between 1831 and 1842, which I feel is immediately noticeable in the pacing (much like older films, older literature 'moves' slower, which isn't necessarily a good or a bad thing, more an observation).

Gogol tends to start a story from a great distance - he'll describe in great detail a scene, or a location, all the kinds of people, their thoughts and worries. Then he'll zoom in on one or more particular characters and the actual story begins. This is not the end of his eye for details, it just becomes wonderfully focused.

The overall effect on the stories is that they become quite tongue-in-cheek, farcical almost. There is also a general feeling of laissez-faire, a constant melancholy sense of "what can you do?" (or "..and so it goes", as Kurt Vonnegut would say). The world is chaotic, you have little control over your circumstances, and the rest is controlled by obnoxious little career men.

Now and then Gogol's eye for details became overwhelming for me, as if he couldn't make a choice who he was interested in, so he described everyone and everything.

It is important to note this edition is strengthened with a set of very informative footnotes by the translator, Susanne Fusso. It gives insight into her translating choices, and provides background and context to the stories.

The collection is a wonderful witty look at old world Russia through one man's eyes. Recommended.

Nikolai Gogol's The Nose and Other Stories, translated by Susanne Fusso, provides readers with short stories that probe the depths of Gogol's imagination, offering tales that combine the profound and the entertaining. 

Comprised of nine imaginative stories, the collection moves at varying paces through a variety of broad scenarios that narrow their focus and address similar basic topics surrounding bureaucratic systems and crowds in cities; some of the stories, such as The Nose or Diary of a Madman, were far more interesting and quickly paced than others within these pages. In general, the writing is incredibly descriptive, perhaps overly so at times that drags down the momentum, as it takes time and effort to flesh out the minutely detailed backgrounds of characters, which typically isn't necessary for understanding the overall plot of the stories offered. The stories that incorporated a larger dose of magical realism were immensely more entertaining and I found them to be easier to connect with and read. My favorite of the bunch, by far, was the titular The Nose as it offered an absurd premise and effortlessly maintained my interest throughout. I was frustrated by the use of end notes as my personal preference is for footnotes, especially for asides that provide greater context for a concept presented - I'm far less likely to flip to the end (particularly in a digital file) than I am to look at the bottom of a page.

Overall, I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars.

This is a superb translation of a superb classic. I really enjoyed reading Gogol's short stories He is not only a very gifted playwright but also a very gifted short story writer. A must-read for all lovers of the European classics.

A great edition and collection of Gogol's tales. Perfect for his long-time fans and for people who don't know where to begin their Nikolai Gogol reading.

I took the chance of a weekend's reading to tackle not one but two books claiming to be the best of Gogol's short stories – this and a rival volume (ISBN 9781782275152). This was the more scholarly, at least as where the publishers involved were concerned, and copious notes in the back matter were on hand to get us used to all the folk dance names and everything else from the author's society featuring in these tales. But the problem for me was that all that actually featured. Take the second tale here, 'Viy', where three students are on their furlough in the countryside, when one has a magical encounter, which is followed by a most unexpected request. Gogol himself said this was a literal transposing of an actual Ukrainian legend – well that's as may be, but no oral storyteller would ramble on so much about describing this, keeping us informed on that aspect of life and the other. It's literary – and far too so – not literal. Apparently these are comedic – well, the opener, again featuring a cross-over into the netherworlds, seemed to have a kind of sprightliness that might have sounded ribald at one time, but the average browser nowadays would never be expected to actually laugh at anything there, surely?

Much better is 'The Portrait', a couplet of tales about the same demonic painting, but an opus that still shows that while Gogol can write, he can also witter on with longueurs, and try and cram too much of everyday life description into his macabre, or the other way round. The esteemed work 'Nevsky Avenue' is just mundane, and just a stodge in my mind; 'Diary of a Madman' is an unsympathetic and unfunny look at insanity. There are some arch quips to be had with 'The Carriage', with the puff-puffing puffed-up people talking shop over their pipes, and the pretty wife needing to spend longer at her toilette BECAUSE she looked pretty, but this comedy of societal manners didn't do much for me, either. 'The Overcoat', presented new for the author's Collected Stories output, did OK but once more proved he was a fan of fifty words when five would do. 'Rome' did nothing for me except prove why it was seldom included in such translated collections. By far the most interesting was our title story, 'The Nose', which had a lot of ancestral DNA for both the Kafkaesque and the Theatre of the Absurd. No it made no sense at all at times, but it was almost a keeper.

So this collection gave me two stories I would consider to have offered strong memories. The book itself is one where it's daft to consider a star rating, for I always appreciated it – once more these publishers give a sterling presentation to their material. It's just the let-down is the author, his approach and style, and his stories themselves. Could I honestly recommend what I thought a lovely restaurant if I hated the courses I ate? I'm in the same boat here – not wanting to turn people away from ticking this classic author off your checklist, but quite confident the general reader would find a lot of the experience disagreeable.

I loved how creatively strange the stories in this collection was, it kept me amused and uncomfortable in the best way the entire time I was reading it. Some stories definitely stood out as being more grabbing than others, but that is of course to be expected for a book of this kind. Some of the writing did seem to be long winded and unnecessary, however that may just be an author's choice that did not gel well with me as a reader due to personal preferences.

I have to start by saying that though Gogol’s writing is quite intriguing, his stories are never easy to read. The short story collection of the famous Russian-Ukrainian author are full of incomprehensible natural phenomena and mystery that gives a chill to the bone.He upsets the balance of nature with a ripple effect, not leaving the world as we know it behind for a magical reality but decorates it with strange disorders. The supernatural feels too realistic and natural.

I have to congratulate the translator here, as well. Gogol is known as one of the most untranslatable Russian authors of all times. The stories tend to lose some meaning and aura and the deep dark reflections of the author’s soul is not easily translated despite the bridges carefully built by brilliant translators. But here we have a meticulous work of a team of professionals.


My personal favorite here in this collection was The Portrait, which told the story of a lifelike painting in two sections, from different perspectives with two unique narrations. It was quite refreshing to read again the author’s most sensational and famous stories The Nose and Overcoat, too. As surreal and grotesque as ever, The Nose tells the story of a man waking up one morning, realizing that he has lost his nose. Is it a satirical criticism of over-analyzing and giving sub-meanings to literature that the author never intended? Who knows what the author thought, we can only speculate. The Overcoat is a sad story of a poverty-stricken officer named Akaky who works his life off to buy a new overcoat.

I'm excited for this collection but for the purposes of the contest I'm judging I don't think it's eligible, as they were originally written in 1836.

I love Gogol, but this is not my favorite translation. Doesn't seem to capture the "Russian Soul" in this translation.

Gogol is, like many classic authors, hit or miss with today's readers. This collection of short stories offers a great survey of his skills as a writer and the translator did a wonderful job. Some stories I enjoyed more than others, but overall, a good collection.

Thank you NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the opportunity to read an advance reading copy.

A collection of nine short stories by Russian author Nikolai Gogol, the Nose and Other Stories flits in and out of magical realism and the absurd, sometimes hitting the mark and sometimes coming off as a bit too "verbose" and descriptive for my taste. Perhaps this is the modern reader speaking in me, but there were many times where I was hoping for the narratives to run a bit smoother. Still, the Nose is a romp and the Portrait is quite an interesting take on dual narratives.

My thanks to Netgalley and Columbia University Press for the ARC.

These nine stories serve as my introduction to Nikolai Gogol, a celebrated Ukrainian writer who I must admit I have never read before now. I was aware of and intrigued by his final tormented work, Lost Souls, and years ago I had attended a production of his stage play The Government Inspector, a sharp satire of petty bureaucracy. With only those glancing references, my approach to this collection was (hopefully) one of an open mind and a healthy curiosity, and the experience was a good one.

Often in these stories, the author uses Russian folklore and supernatural elements to explore class distinctions and Nationalist mindset. They can certainly be read for entertainment on the surface level, but like all worthy literature, there is much going on underneath that rewards analysis. Take, for example, "The Portrait," which invites comparison with Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, but in my estimation Gogol's tale is more complex and less moralistic. As a young painter takes money found in the frame of a demonic portrait and his drive as an artist suffers as a result, there is more at work in the writing and intention than a simple cause-and-effect parable.

Even in translation – and Susanne Fusso does excellent work making the Russian-to-English prose accessible, readable, and unfussily poetic – Gogol's ambitious descriptions and resounding ideas are often beautiful and striking. Take this passage chronicling the troubled painter's changing of values from warm idealism to cold materialism; it circles an age-based human reaction that feels universal and timeless, and it was one of many moments in his stories where I felt the author achieved a perfect little revelation of perception:

His life was reaching the years when everything that breathes of impulse begins to shrink within a person, when the powerful violin bow reaches the soul more faintly and does not twine about the heart with piercing sounds, when contact with beauty no longer transforms virginal powers into fire and flame, but all the burned-out feelings become more open to the sound of gold, listen more attentively to its alluring music, and little by little, imperceptibly, allow it to put them completely to sleep.


Indeed, I found myself with more than a dozen quotations jotted down by the time I finished the collection, which is fairly impressive. Many of these sentences illustrated Gogol's winking sense of humor, which I greatly appreciated. Often, the comedy is grounded in the societal social order and class system that make some citizens "important" and others "valueless" based on their title or lack of one. There is this gem from "The Carriage," about a mid-level army lieutenant who brags about the quality of his horse-drawn cart to such an extent that his colleagues catch him by surprise when they request a visit:

Chertokutsky, despite all his aristocratism, bent so far over in his carriage and with such a sweep of his head that when he got home he brought with him two burrs in his mustache.

The first two tales here, "The Lost Letter" and "Viy", describe their protagonists' encounters with demons and witches and were founded in regional tales of Ukraine folklore. In Gogol's most famous short story, "The Nose", the author takes an absurdist premise and once more looks at Russian class consciousness as Collegiate Assessor Kovolyov is irritated to find that his nose has gone missing, and then discovers that its new incarnation is of a higher government rank than he is!

"Nevsky Avenue" is a lively and colorful overview of 19th-century street life in Saint Petersburg, while "The Overcoat" is a tale full of pathos, recounting the arduous saving of a menial clerk to replace his winter coat, only to have his new possession and the clerk himself disappear while the world around them takes no notice. Only with the lengthy "Rome, a Fragment" did my interest flag, which likely had more to do with the absence of a central character or single thematic idea than with the quality of Gogol's examination of Roman Catholic customs and attitudes in a land so foreign to him.

Translator Fusso also meticulously annotates the text to define and explain the many Russian cultural, political, and geographical references. If, like me, you're new to Nikolai Gogol's writing (or if you would like to revisit his work in a new translation), this is a great place to start. I received an advance reading copy via NetGalley in exchange for a forthright review.

The Nose and Other Stories by Nikolai Gogol and Translated by Susanne Fusso is a Columbia University Press publication.  Gogol was a Russian dramatist of Ukrainian origin. Although Gogol was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, this collection is an example of the more surreal and grotesque.  Fusso is a specialist in nineteenth-century Russian prose, especially Gogol and Dostoevsky. She is the author of Designing Dead Souls: An Anatomy of Disorder in Gogol and Discovering Sexuality in Dostoevsky.

A hellish trip for a messenger, a man's nose that has a life of its own, a man slipping into madness, hidden stories of a well-described street, and a story of a man and his overcoat round out the stories in the collection.  The title story, which starts out shockingly as a barber finds a nose in his morning bread, has a humorous side as its owner goes in search of the missing appendage.  The rank conscious owner is in an awkward position as the nose not only outranks him but dismisses him.  Gogol's other stories capture real issues in Russian society and twist them violently.  Class, greed, sex, and status are all covered in different stories.  There is a strange humor in many of the stories unlike "The Nose," "The Diary of a Mad Man" is a descent into madness, a grave plot topic, but the character's delusions are quite humorous.  Other stories like "The Carriage" seem to touch the absurd.  

Gogol is a master of short stories.  He delivers excellent detail with minimal use of words, and this survives in the superb translation.  His darker side runs the full range from horror to humorous to a combination of both.  Fusso's translation captures nineteenth-century Russian life as well as the setting while faithfully rendering it into English.  Her translation captures all of Gogol's magic.

THE NOSE AND OTHER STORIES by Nikolai Gogol (translated by Susanne
Fusso) (Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-19069-5) is a new
translation of these stories. Since I am not familiar with the
older translations, I cannot compare that aspect, though I will
make one observation. When one reads a 19th century author (e.g.,
Jane Austen), one expects a certain style, and rewriting (e.g.,
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE) for a more modern sound would be a big
mistake. But that seems to be what some translators try to do.
There seems to be a little of that, but on the whole Fusso manages
to retain a sense of the time when Gogol was writing.

Now, most people think of Gogol as just another Russian writer,
like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and all those writers who go on at
length about the social conditions in Russia. But Gogol is more
like Edgar Allan Poe, writing fantastical stories that are not 800
pages long. "The Lost Letter", for example, is about someone who
sold his soul to the devil, complete with a witches' Sabbath.
"Vij" (a.k.a. "Viy") is also about an encounter with a witch, and
was adapted by Mario Bava into the film BLACK SUNDAY (the 1960 one,
not the 1977 one set at the Super Bowl). "The Portrait" is about a
magical portrait in a shop that offers to help the artist who sees
it become successful.

"The Nose" may be the ultimate in this, being surreal as well as
"merely" fantastical.

"Diary of a Madman" is somewhere between reality and fantasy: the
first-person narrator descends into a fantasy world, but it is
realistic in its portrayal of the narrator's madness. "The
Overcoat" (often considered Gogol's masterpiece) is primarily
realistic, but towards the end introduces an element of fantasy.

There are some exceptions. "Nevsky Avenue" (a.k.a. "Nevsky
Prospekt"), on the other hand, is more of a realistic story of
people on Nevsky Avenue. "The Carriage" is another realistic story
with a surprisingly mundane ending.

Of course, even though may readers who like stories of the
supernatural would probably enjoy this book, it is (alas) unlikely
that they will ever find this, or pick it up if they did. Still,
maybe this review will encourage them.

An informative and fun collection of stories from an immense character in Russian/Ukrainian literature. These translations preserve the magic and whimsy of the original work without sacrificing their substance. Brava!

I found this book to be very interesting, it was translated nicely and made the book overall a good read. This was my first time reading Gogol’s work and it certainly didn’t disappoint me.

The Nose and Other Stories is a testament to a writer at play and an artist who lets his imagination wander. Through Susanne Fusso’s translation, the absurdity that runs through Gogol’s short stories shines through. There are no jarring moments where Gogol’s odd humor and phrasing get lost in the translation. The collection spans from the bustle of St. Petersburg, ancient Rome, and rural Ukraine, and in each story Gogol walks a blurred line between fantasy and reality. While the stories are easy to read, this collection isn’t necessarily addictive. Several of the themes (e.g. temptation and the dangers of beautiful women) are dated and not particularly timely. But due to the stories’ bizarre plots and fantastical elements, it’s understandable as to why many writers continue to return to Gogol’s imaginative work.

Gogol is one of the greats of Russian literature, and this collection shows why. The translator has picked a sampling of Gogol's career, both in terms of time, setting, and tone; she includes his best known stories, as well as several not often found in English.

I'm not qualified to assess the quality of the translation, but the English is very animated and readable, with Gogol's humor and sense of the absurd shining through. Unlike some "classics" that can be a slog for modern readers, these are funny, enlightening, and surprising.

I hadn't read any Gogol before this, but I had seen a student staging of "The Inspector General" and I knew the Nose by reputation as the story of a nose that leaves its face tries to escape St. Petersburg dressed as a Noble. So I was expecting some funny, cutting satire. On the whole, that's not what I got, but I'm not left disappointed.

These stories are a selection from across Gogol's career, and although the range from folktales and ghost stories, to morality plays, to satire, to paeans to Rome, they all share a preoccupation with Christian spirituality, a strong sense of morality (and the ways the Russian society didn't live up to those morals), a sense of fairness, a wry narrator who easily slips into ornamented description, and a sense of the ways that little actions can have huge impacts on others' lives.

Not every story in this collection was interesting; I often have a hard time with 19th century writing because it seems so flowery and baroque, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. Well worth reading if you're interested in Russia or the development of the short story. And the title story, while not as focused on the nose as I thought, was still wonderful, absurd, and delightful.

Disclosure: I'm a Russian lit major, so my perspective is no doubt far more warped than most readers.'

Gogol is my least favorite of the classic Russian authors. I can appreciate his singular imagination and his eye for detail, but I just don't enjoy reading him as much as other authors. I had to read "The Nose" and "The Overcoat" in the original for more than one class (he is a favorite of cruel Russian instructors), and have even tried teaching Dead Souls, despite my lukewarm feelings.

So I was intrigued to read this collection, which features a wide sample of Gogol's work from different times in his career: "The Lost Letter," "Viy," "The Portrait" (1835), "Nevsky Avenue," "Diary of a Madman," "The Carriage," "The Nose," "Rome," and "The Overcoat." My first impression is that Susanne Fusso's translation is excellent. Unlike many translators, who have trouble accepting that some Russian words simply have no English equivalent and insert something truly bizarre (Pevear and Volokhonsky, I"m looking at you), Fusso acknowledges when a word is untranslatable. In fact, her notes are what make this edition worth buying, especially for the reader unfamiliar with Gogol's world. The edition is scholarly enough to use for a college classroom, but accessible to the casual reader as well. As to whether those readers will enjoy Gogol, well, that's a matter of taste, I suppose.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a digital ARC for the purpose of an unbiased review.

A new translation of a favorite Russian writer's stories. Well-done! Really enjoyed and would recommend.

A great new translation of a wide swath of Gogol's works, from his rustic and fantastical beginnings to the more cosmopolitan and well-known Petersburg stories. The only downside is the inclusion of Rome (A Fragment), which was a bore to read and required significant willpower to push through.