Gogol

This biography reveals Gogol from an unexpected angle: his passion for handicrafts, difficult encounters with critics, painful themes of his mental state, and mysteries connected with his legacy. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a great satirist who went from being the son of a not-very-well-off provincial nobleman to becoming the writer that textbooks usually portray him as. But behind the familiar image there is another: he loved to make things, had almost no close friends, and one day he finally broke with Belinsky.

The book from the series “The Most Complete Biography” gathers rare information and astonishing details from his life. Did Gogol suffer from mental illness? Who was his great love? Can we talk about megalomania? And is it true that a spiritual mentor, considered a teacher of the writer, played a fateful role—seeking to destroy the manuscript for his own purposes?

A new work by Iona Riznich offers a chance to sort out these questions—pen name of Maria Baganova, author of many books on Russian history and a longtime admirer of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.