These two St Petersburg stories each follow a minor civil servant. Akaky Akakievich, a copying clerk mocked by his colleagues, goes without for months to have a new overcoat made. Kovalyov, for his part, wakes up one morning without his nose, and soon meets it in the street, in uniform and of a higher rank than his own.
Gogol mixes laughter and pity, in a city where the absurd rules. Dostoevsky is credited with a famous line: “We all came out of Gogol's Overcoat.”
You can read each of these short stories in one sitting in the language you are learning.
