Gogol - The Nose

"The Nose" is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol. Written between 1835 and 1836, it tells of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own.

Richard Peace, in his introduction to the Oxford University Press edition, notes that the story's title in Russian ("Nos") is the reverse of the Russian word for "dream" ("Son"). As the unreliable narrator himself notes, the story "contains much that is highly implausible", while an earlier version of the st…