Gogol was just 24 when he started to write one of his most brilliant masterpieces, The Nose. He completed it in 1835, but the editors of the Moscow Observer refused to publish it, describing it as 'filthy'. The Nose thus appeared in Pushkin's journal, The Contemporary, in 1836. It is Gogol's most remarkable achievement in the genre of the absurd and indeed is considered seminal for the development of that genre in the twentieth century. It is no doubt the measure of Gogol's achievement that the bizarre adventures of the Nose in the guise of a civil servant still have the power to baffle today's critics.

The Russian text is presented here with English introduction, notes on the text and vocabulary.