Nikolai Gogol

Russian · 1809–1852

Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, dramatist, and short story writer, often considered the father of Russian realism even though much of his best-known work veers into the grotesque, the surreal, and the satirical. His comic short stories — especially The Nose and The Overcoat — and his novel Dead Souls skewered the petty obsessions and bureaucratic absurdity of Tsarist Russia, while his play The Government Inspector lampooned provincial officialdom. A famously eccentric and tormented figure, self-conscious about his appearance (notably his nose) and increasingly devout in later life, he burned the manuscript of the second part of Dead Souls before starving himself to death at 42. Dostoevsky's line — "We all came out from under Gogol's overcoat" — sums up his foundational influence on later Russian literature.

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