Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was one of the great masters of Russian literature, and was the author of numerous stories and a novel, Dead Souls. Together, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated Dostoevsky's Dead Souls, Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, for which they were awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. They then translated several works by Bulgakov for Penguin Classics. Latterly, their new versions of Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina attracted global acclaim. Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot is also published by Granta Books.Gogol's occasional weirdness is just as weird today, of such a strange order of invention, that even a word like "exuberant" doesn't begin to cover it ... Gogol is strangely timeless
- Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
This was, for me, an electric introduction to Russian literature.
- AD Miller, The Independent
Nabokov was right about Gogol's greatness, and right to point out that he was a creator of a new reality
- A.S. Byatt,
Gogol's narratives take on a compelling logic of their own and the details are by turn comic, sinister, and even touching ... Gogol doesn't ignore the conventions of realism, but, rather, jumbles them up, as in a dream. His stories build their hilarious fantasies on solid observational foundations
- Edmund Gordon, Observer
One of the most unfathomable minds and most spellbinding narrators in literary history. Shrewd observer, Romantic dreamer, idiot savant, parodist, or a comic Dante, Gogol still eludes all categories
- Donald Rayfield, Literary Review
The "father of Russian Modernism" came to fame very early which possibly burned him out, as he wrote little in the last 10 years of his life. His tales might have been written weeks ago though, so fresh and vibrant are they, a testament to the youth of their author when he wrote them
- Lesley McDowell, Sunday Herald
Such is Gogol's all-pervasive influence on European writing that both of these new editions are great value
- Eileen Battersby, Books of the Year, Irish Times