The Viy

Three students. A deserted house. A witch. This horror novella boasts an abundance of supernatural encounters, dazzling effects, and folktale elements. Included in the cycle ‘Mirgorod’, this is one of Gogol’s most successful works and has witnessed some notable movie adaptations. Considered one of the most prominent figures in the short story genre, Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was born in Ukraine. Both a writer and a dramatist, he is known for the unconventional nature of his works, so much so that they often touch upon folklore and fantasy. He has been attached to a range of different literary styles, including surrealism and Russian realism. Gogol’s most famous works include the novel "Dead Souls", the horror novella "Viy", as well as the short story collections "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka" and "Mirgorod". They have inspired numerous stage, film, and television adaptations including the movie "Inspector General" (1949), based loosely on his play with the same name.

A collection of short comic stories “This world is full of the most outrageous nonsense. Sometimes things happen which you would hardly think possible.”-The Nose, Nikolai Gogol This is a collection of five short satiric stories by Nikolai Gogol that focus on the ugly and the sad elements in life.

Secret, strange, dark, impure and dissonant...Enter the haunted landscapes of folk horror, a world of ­pagan ­village conspiracies, witch finders, and teenagers awakening to evil; of dark fairy tales, backwoods cults and obsolete technologies. Beginning with the classics Night of the Demon, Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan's Claw, We Don't Go Back surveys the genre of screen folk horror from across the world. Travelling from Watership Down to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with every stop inbetween, We Don't Go Back is a thoughtful, funny and essential overview of folk horror in TV and cinema."A beautiful rumination on the dark films and television that shaped me and a generation of odd children, for good or ill, worth a year of your time, because you won't just read the book, you'll feel a burning desire to watch everything mentioned within." - Robin Ince"A comprehensive, accessible and often riotously funny tome weaving together folk horror in all its forms, from British television to the American backwoods, from Eastern European fairytales to the vengeful ghosts of East Asia. Ingham explores uncanny landscapes haunted by things buried, old cultures converging with the reluctance of contemporary reason, that very tension that gives his book its name. He attempts to both define folk horror and free it from definition, creating the ultimate guide to the genre's manifestations on film and offering a convincing argument as to why the genre resonates so compellingly with people today." - Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women

Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogol’s peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turns—or at once—funny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature. These stories showcase Gogol’s vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogol’s characteristic obsessions—city crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguise—and a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fusso’s translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.

Using, or rather mimicking, traditional forms of storytelling Gogol created stories that are complete within themselves and only tangentially connected to a meaning or moral. His work belongs to the school of invention, where each twist and turn of the narrative is a surprise unfettered by obligation to an overarching theme. Selected from Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, Mirgorod, and the Petersburg tales and arranged in order of composition, the thirteen stories in The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogolencompass the breadth of Gogol's literary achievement. From the demon-haunted “St. John's Eve ” to the heartrending humiliations and trials of a titular councilor in “The Overcoat,” Gogol's knack for turning literary conventions on their heads combined with his overt joy in the art of story telling shine through in each of the tales. This translation, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is as vigorous and darkly funny as the original Russian. It allows readers to experience anew the unmistakable genius of a writer who paved the way for Dostevsky and Kafka.

Reproduction of the original: The Mantle and Other Stories by Nicholas Gogol

This two-volume edition at last brings all of Gogol's fiction (except his novel Dead Souls) together in paperback. Volume one includes Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, as well as 'Nevsky Prospekt' and 'Diary of a Madman'.

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. It is said that if you haven't read the great Russian playwrights and authors then you haven't read anything at all. This edition represents a collection of some of the greatest Russian plays and short stories: Plays The Inspector General Savva The Life of Man Short Stories The Queen of Spades The Cloak The District Doctor The Christmas Tree And The Wedding God Sees The Truth, But Waits How A Muzhik Fed Two Officials The Shades, A Phantasy The Signal The Darling The Bet Vanka Hide And Seek Dethroned The Servant One Autumn Night Her Lover Lazarus The Revolutionist The Outrage An Honest Thief A Novel in Nine Letters An Unpleasant Predicament Another Man's Wife The Heavenly Christmas Tree The Peasant Marey The Crocodile Bobok The Dream of a Ridiculous Man Mumu The Shot St. John'S Eve An Old Acquaintance The Mantle The Nose Memoirs Of A Madman A May Night The Viy Knock, Knock, Knock The Inn Lieutenant Yergunov's Story The Dog The Watch Essays On Russian Novelists Lectures On Russian Novelists