The New Yorker, James Wood
...a superb ... translation...


The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Leonard Michaels
This is the Gogolian surreal. Unlike most of what we call surrealism, it doesn't feel gratuitous, meretricious or trivial. It has the mysterious cogency of a dream, and the quality of realness that we hesitate to say is merely a dream.


From Kirkus Reviews
Pevear and Volokhonsky continue their remarkable conquest of 19th-century Russian fiction with this lively new translation of 13 of ``the Russian Dickens's'' wildest and finest stories. Excluding only lesser pieces from Gogol's earliest volumes (though one misses the madly romantic novella ``Taras Bulba''), this selection offers richly colloquial versions (which sound like spoken narrative) of such classic ``Ukrainian Tales'' as the imperturbably melodramatic ``The Terrible Vengeance'' and the memorably lurid vampire tale ``Viy,'' and also ``Petersburg Tales'' like the deliriously surrealistic ``The Nose'' and that uniquely dreamlike, and seminal, portrayal of a timid clerk's acquisition and loss of his only meaningful possession: ``The Overcoat.'' Pevear's informative Preface persuasively emphasizes the personal, nonpolitical, and, to some degree, haphazard nature of the distinctive alchemy by which a deeply flawed and troubled soul managed to create some of the most colorful and haunting fiction of his century. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Nikolai Gogol's stories continue to delight readers the world over. Now a new translation - from an award-winning team of translators - presents these stories in all their inventive, exuberant glory to English-speaking readers. For the first time, the best of Gogol's short fiction is brought together in a single volume: from the colorful Ukrainian tales that led some critics to call him "the Russian Dickens" to the Petersburg stories, with their black humor and wonderfully demented attitude toward the powers that be. All of Gogol's most memorable creations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

Pevear and Volokhonsky continue their remarkable conquest of 19th-century Russian fiction with this lively new translation of 13 of "the Russian Dickens's" wildest and finest stories. Excluding only lesser pieces from Gogol's earliest volumes (though one misses the madly romantic novella "Taras Bulba"), this selection offers richly colloquial versions (which sound like spoken narrative) of such classic "Ukrainian Tales" as the imperturbably melodramatic "The Terrible Vengeance" and the memorably lurid vampire tale "Viy," and also "Petersburg Tales" like the deliriously surrealistic "The Nose" and that uniquely dreamlike, and seminal, portrayal of a timid clerk's acquisition and loss of his only meaningful possession: "The Overcoat." Pevear's informative Preface persuasively emphasizes the personal, nonpolitical, and, to some degree, haphazard nature of the distinctive alchemy by which a deeply flawed and troubled soul managed to create some of the most colorful and haunting fiction of his century.

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