Nikolai Gogol was a Russian novelist and playwright. Best known for his play The Government Inspector, Gogol’s writing satirized the political corruption in the Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century. His 1842 novel Dead Souls is now considered to be one of the most important novels of nineteenth-century Russian literature. He was one of the first writers to use elements of surrealism and the grotesque in his works and his writing served as a forerunner for absurdism and impressionism. One of his most famous short stories is “The Nose”, which depicts an official in St. Petersburg whose nose leaves his face and takes on a life of its own. It is now a celebrated piece of St. Petersburg’s literary history.
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