Nikolai Gogol
3 Bücher
- Chichikov rides around buying up dead serfs from provincial landowners, and every one of them (dreamy Manilov, miserly Plyushkin) is funnier and sadder than the last. It's absurd, digressive, and unfinished, which somehow suits it.
- You get Gogol at his strangest and sharpest here: a nose walking around St. Petersburg, a petty clerk swallowed by his overcoat, and a diary quietly coming apart. The comedy is wonderfully deadpan, but the loneliness underneath keeps it from feeling weightless.
- A vain little nobody blows into a corrupt town, gets mistaken for a government inspector, and just rolls with it, borrowing money from every trembling official in sight. You'll read it in an evening, laugh at Khlestakov's shameless lying, then notice the satire still lands on people you know.