And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon

Iconic short stories from the Russian master of satire in a strikingly modern translationThe most morally complete writer: baffled outraged reverent mock-didactic mocking all at once. He honours life by feeling no one way about it. — George SaundersNo 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.