This is the story of a nose. No, really -- it's the story of a nose that leaves the face of an official in St. Petersburg (the Russian St. Petersburg, the one in Florida wasn't even a proper village when Gogol was alive). The nose leaves this man's face and wanders off to have a life of its own.

It does strange stuff, too, What's to expect?

Seriously, it's a nose.

In A History of Russian Literature, the critic D.S. Mirsky writes: "The Nose is a piece of sheer play, almost sheer nonsense. In it more than anywhere else Gogol displays his extraordinary magic power of making great comic art out of nothing."

Nikolai Gogol. You've got to love him