Mark R Pettus

Reading Gogol's Petersburg Tales in Russian: A Parallel-Text Russian Reader Mark R Pettus

A pure delight to read, the four major "Petersburg Tales" of Nikolai Gogol - strange and fantastical, ludicrously absurd, by turns harrowing and hilarious - are among the foundational texts of modern Russian literature. In this volume designed specifically for Russian learners, "The Overcoat," "The Nose," "Diary of a Madman," and "Nevsky Prospekt" are presented in their entirety, in the original Russian and in a facing English translation, together with all the vocabulary notes and reference tables you need to make sense of the original. Photographs of important sites will help orient you in Gogol's Petersburg. Designed to help students of Russian begin to enjoy real Russian literature in the original without constantly reaching for a dictionary, this parallel-text edition features a new translation made specifically for this purpose, as well as detailed Russian vocabulary notes, including all the important forms you need (especially aspectual pairs and conjugation types for all verbs). The original Russian text is marked for stress, but is otherwise unedited and unsimplified. In "The Overcoat," a petty copy clerk scrimps and saves to purchase a new overcoat; once acquired, it fills his life with a dubious sort of meaning... until tragedy strikes. In "The Nose," a conceited official wakes up one morning to find an empty, flat spot where his nose used to be! Worse yet, when he finally tracks down his runaway nose, he finds it praying in church, and - O horror! - wearing a uniform of a rank higher than his own! In "Diary of a Madman," a clerk obsessed with his boss's daughter tries to find the answers he seeks by intercepting her dog's correspondence, as he gradually loses all touch with reality. Finally, in "Nevsky Prospekt," two friends follow two different women down the famous Petersburg boulevard - with radically divergent consequences.