The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol: book review

The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (1842, this edition 1992) are four stories by one of Russia’s most famed writers – Nikolai Gogol (1809-1952): The Old-Fashioned Farmers, The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich, The Nose, and The Overcoat.

The Old-Fashioned Farmers is about 60-year old Afanasii and his 52-year old wife Pulcheria; they both had ‘delicate wrinkles,’ never had children and concentrated all of their affections towards each other. Everything is wonderful when they are together, and tragically sad when they are not. It is about passion, habit, loss and grief.

Although it is a long short story in seven parts, I like The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich, in which the two men are such close friends: where one goes, the other follows. In writing about the two men, Gogol is delightfully descriptive, comical and witty.

In The Nose, Ivan Yakovlevich finds a nose inside a loaf of bread. This story is a great satire about incompetent bureacrats.

The short story of the book’s title, The Overcoat, which is about the bureaucracy of the Tsar’s regime in St. Petersburg, has been described as follows: ‘it sums up Russian literature in a nutshell.’ It’s also considered to be a masterpiece. I think I agree.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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