The Overcoat

by Nikolai Gogol, Isabel F. Hapgood (Translator)

Overview

The Overcoat which is generally acknowledged as the finest of Gogol's memorable Saint Petersburg stories, is a tale of the absurd and misplaced obsessions.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940161349540
Publisher:	UnderPress Books
Publication date:	04/05/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	75 KB

About the Author

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (??????? ?????????? ??????) was born in the Ukrainian Cossack village of Sorochyntsi, in Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine. His mother was a descendant of Polish nobility. His father Vasily Gogol-Yanovsky, a descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks, belonged to the petty gentry, wrote poetry in Russian and Ukrainian, and was an amateur Ukrainian-language playwright who died when Gogol was 15 years old.

In 1820 Gogol went to a school of higher art in Nizhyn and remained there until 1828. It was there that he began writing. Very early he developed a dark and secretive disposition, marked by a painful self-consciousness and boundless ambition. Equally early he developed an extraordinary talent for mimicry which later on made him a matchless reader of his own works.

Editorial Reviews

It is a simple tale, on the surface. Akaky Akakievich (literally "Harmless Son-of-Harmless," but which might sound like "Poopy Pooperson" to a child), an impoverished civil servant and scrivener, must maintain his respectability by possessing a decent overcoat.

goodreads - Bill Kerwin

Recently I read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri about two generations of an Indian immigrant family to the United States. The main theme of the novel was that the father Ashoke was reading The Overcoat on a train journey.

goodreads - Brina Sale