Author, dramatist and satirist, Nikolay Gogol deeply influenced Russian literature with his powerful depictions of a society dominated by petty bureaucracy and base corruption. This volume includes both his most admired short fiction and his most famous drama. The Government Inspector, a biting political satire, was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest Russian play ever written. The stories gathered here, including 'The Diary of a Madman', a disturbing exploration of insanity, range from comic to tragic and describe the isolated lives of low-ranking clerks, lunatics and swindlers.