The Night Before Christmas

The Night Before Christmas

Nikolai Gogol

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

Written in 1831, this dark tale relates the adventures of Vakula, the blacksmith, in his fight against the devil, who has stolen the moon above the village of Dikanka and is wreaking havoc on its inhabitants, all to win the love of the most beautiful girl in town. The basis for many film and opera adaptations, and still a story traditionally read aloud to children on Christmas Eve in Ukraine and Russia, The Night Before Christmas is the best holiday tale by the man whom Vladimir Nabokov called 'the greatest writer Russia has yet produced'. Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was the son of a Ukrainian gentleman farmer. He attended a variety of boarding schools, where he proved an indifferent student but was admired for his theatrical abilities. In 1828 he moved to St. Petersburg and began to publish stories, and by the mid-1830s he had established himself in the literary world and been warmly praised by Pushkin. In 1836, his play The Inspector-General was attacked as immoral, and he left Russia, remaining abroad for most of the next dozen years. During that time he wrote two of his best-known stories, The Nose and The Overcoat and in 1842 he published the first section of his masterpiece Dead Souls. Gogol became increasingly religious as the years passed, and in 1847 he became the disciple of an Orthodox priest who influenced him to burn the second part of Dead Souls and then abandon writing altogether. After undertaking an extreme fast, he died at the age of forty-two.

Publication Year: 2014


From the Forum

No posts yet

Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update

Recent Reviews

Your rating:

  • heartwyldslibrary
    Feb 12, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    Yah, this was just not for me, classic or not. And it’s most definitely not the version I have ever heard. I actually got confused a few times. And didn’t exactly find wives and husbands beating each other to be entertaining. And the end is just so abrupt, like this devil helps this guy get a self absorbed woman to fall in love with him and then paints said devil on the church and people disrespect it over and over. And apparently the devil is cool with this, since it doesn’t state him being upset about it. It was strange and It just felt like such a hot mess.

    0
    comments 0
    Reply
  • View all reviews
    Community recs if you liked this book...