Nikolai Gogol was the most idiosyncratic of the great Russian novelists of the 19th century and lived a tragically short life which was as chaotic as the lives of the characters he created.

This biography begins with Gogol's death and ends with his birth, an inverted structure typical of both Gogol and Nabokov. The biographer proceeds to establish the relationship between Gogol and his novels, especially with regard to "nose-consciousness", a peculiar feature of Russian life and letters, which finds its apotheosis in Gogol's own life and prose. There are more expressions and proverbs concerning the nose in Russian than in any other language in the world. Nabokov's style in this biography is comic, but as always leads to serious issues -- in this case, an appreciation of the distinctive "sense of the physical" inherent in Gogol's work. Nabokov describes how Gogol's life and literature mingled, and explains the structure and style of Gogol's prose in terms of the novelist's life.

• We started tracking this book on August 9, 2022.
• This book was £7.74 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 27 times in the past 1,008 days.
• The current price of this book is £10.39 last checked 6 hours ago.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is £7.42.
• The lowest price to date was £7.12 last reached on May 9, 2023.
• This book has been £7.12 3 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was £10.39 last reached on May 2, 2025.
• This book has been £10.39 2 times since we started tracking it.
• This book is currently at its highest price since we started tracking it.

• Biography & True AccountsArts & LiteratureAuthors

• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 172 Pages
• File Size: 918 KB