7/3/2023 0 Comments The Nose by Nikolai Gogol![]() ![]() ![]() And in the translation that I read, the Major does not wake up from a dream (which is a possible version you may encounter), and therefore it is considered to be a precursor to magical realism. For those with no real connection to Russian literature and culture this went mostly over my head. Frankly I had to turn to Wikipedia to even have a clue as to the underlying ‘meaning’ of it all. It is certainly the strangest tale I have read to date. It is short, but you might as well have some sort of “unknown” ending should you choose to read this. I won’t tell you what occurs in the last section of the story. Through this narrative we find that the nose is living a life of its own and is unwilling to return to the Major’s face. He wakes up with a flat pancake face right where his nose should be. We then shift to the story of the now noseless Major. Horrified, and unable to remember if he had pulled or cut his client’s nose off he heads out to dispose of it. Not just any nose, but that of a regular client, a Major Kovaliov. On cutting it and examining the inside of his half he finds a nose. He asks his wife for the freshly baked bread, which he proceeds to cut in two. We begin by meeting a working class barber, Ivan Yakovlevich waking up and having breakfast. That makes reviewing it rather difficult and rather simple in the same breath. The Nose by Nikolai Gogol, in the edition of his tales that I have, is a whole 23 pages long. ![]() Welcome to what is likely to be the shortest of the 1001 Books reviews. ![]()
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