Diary of a Madman, and Other Stories

These five stories, including 'Diary of a Madman - the Overcoat and The Nose', make the best introduction to Gogol. His world is less a world than an atmosphere, a question of sleight of hand and trapdoor humour, involving characters that are vivid in the way only ghosts or government clerks can be. 'When, as in his immortal 'The Overcoat', he really let himself go and pottered happily on the brink of his private abyss, he became the greatest artist that Russia has yet produced,' wrote Nabokov, adding that 'after reading Gogol one's eyes may become gogolized and one is apt to see bits of his world in the most unexpected places'.