Collected here are Gogol"s finest tales - from the demon-haunted "St John"s Eve" to the strange surrealism of "The Nose", from the heart-rending trials of the copyist in "The Overcoat" to those of the delusional clerk in "The Diary of a Madman" - allowing readers to experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who paved the way for Dostoevsky and Kafka. To this superb new translation - the first in twenty-five years and destined to become the definitive edition of Gogol"s short fiction - Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky bring the same clarity and fidelity to the original that they brought to their brilliant translation of Dostoevsky"s works and to War and Peace.