The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

By: Nikolai Gogol

Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton

The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories is a bizarre and colorful collection containing the finest short stories by the iconic Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. From the witty and Kafkaesque "The Nose", where a civil servant wakes up one day to find his nose missing, to the moving and evocative "The Overcoat", about a reclusive man whose only ambition is to replace his old, threadbare coat, Gogol gives us a unique take on the absurd. Gogol’s tales of inconsequential civil servants, mixing the everyday with the surreal, foreshadow the work of his later acolytes, Bulgakov and Kafka. None is more cutting than the main story, "The Diary of a Madman", where a government clerk descends to insanity, claiming that he can communicate with dogs and that he is next in line to the throne of Spain. Translator: Constance Garnett.

©2018 Public Domain (P)2018 Naxos AudioBooks

Great stories, just can’t tell when they end

I loved the stories themselves. I wish I could give five stars, I’m about half way through and this is the first audible book that’s truly left me frustrated. The lack of story differentiation with anything to signify the beginning and end makes it so they all kind of run together. It may be my fault for not paying extremely close attention, but as it’s somewhat of a task for me to stay completely focused to begin with, this makes it even harder and more confusing. Wishing there was another option with more clearly defined ends and beginnings.

Brilliant writer, fantastic narration, plus TOC

Gogol's stories are strange, funny, horrifying, enlightening. I particularly enjoyed "The Diary of a Madman," "The Nose," "The Portrait," "The Overcoat," "Christmas Eve," "A Terrible Vengeance" and "Viy." Nicholas Boulton really brought each story to life uniquely. Since the book doesn't have a proper table of contents, here's how it breaks down:

1. Petersburg Tales. Nevsky Prospect
10. The Diary of a Madman
16. The Nose
23. The Carriage
26. The Portrait
41. The Overcoat
49. Ukranian Tales. St John’s Eve
53. Christmas Eve
64. A Terrible Vengeance
75. Ivan Fyodorovitch Shponka and his Aunt
81. Old-World Landowners
86. Viy
96. The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovitch quarelled…

Delightful start to finish

I can’t imagine a better narrator than Nicholas Boulton for this delightful collection of stories. Every character gets his due, every lyrical description of nature its music.

I’d read The Nose and The Overcoat but had never dipped far into Gogol’s stories. They are grouped into Petersburg Tales (6 stories) and Ukrainian Tales (7 stories), and the two sets of stories are quite different. The Nose and The Overcoat belong to the first group, and while the stories are urban and mostly realistic, there are (obviously) flights of fancy and absurdity. The second group, mostly populated by Cossack soldiers and villagers, occasionally takes a darker turn: there are witches, devils, and wizards weaving in and out of these stories: there are dead men who rise from their graves and moan about being stifled.

One of them, Viy, is the scariest ghost story I’ve ever read. Another one, Christmas Eve, pictures a world where witches and devils show up in a small village to wreak havoc. A blacksmith loves a young woman, but she sets him an almost impossible task: to give her a pair of shoes worthy of the Tsaritsa. But the story hardly follows a straight line. It reads like an improvisation, a story told by a master storyteller who had no idea how his story would end when he started telling it. I mean that in a good way: the story is always surprising and ultimately very satisfying.

A great collection and a treat to listen to. It left me hungering for more Gogol.

The Diary of a Madman and other stories

The Diary of a Madman and other stories
By Nikolai Gogol

Gogol's stories are so entertaining, so fresh & original. As a writer, he has been given great imaginative gifts. Other stories include the Nevski Prospect, The Portrait, Dead Souls, The Overcoat, Christmas Eve, The Nose and the Inspector General.

Amazing imagination

He is very funny. He lives to laugh and make us laugh. I loved this collection. Long live Gogol.

Great narration, absent metadata

The narration is wonderful. Having no metadata is ridiculous—it is not hard for Amazon to do a better job. I am very disappointed.

Contents are horrible; disappointed.

There are 107 chapters. They are labeled Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. They do not correspond to the beginnings or ends of stories, and there is no way to tell what stories they are part of nor is there even any way to know exactly which stories are in the book. This makes for a frustrating experience that is totally unnecessary and leaves me disappointed.