The Cloak aka The Overcoat
Written by Nikolai Gogol
Narrated by Tom McLean and Ghizela Rowe
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
His father wrote poetry and plays which the young Gogol helped stage at his uncle’s home theatre. This helped ignite in him a love of literature and blossomed when he attended, what is now, the Nizhyn Gogol State University at the age of 12. Here he participated in school theatre productions and refined his mastery of his native Ukrainian and also the Russian of his Imperial masters.
In 1828 he went to St Petersburg and unsuccessfully tried to begin a career as an actor after finding that with no money and no connections the civil service was barred to him.
Embezzling money from his mother he embarked on a trip to Germany. When the money ran out, he returned to St Petersburg but the experiences were used in a series of stories he contributed to periodicals. These tales were steeped in his childhood memories of the Ukrainian landscape and peasantry enlivened with the supernatural of its folklore woven with realistic events of the day. He wrote in Russian in a whimsical, colloquial style with a smattering of Ukrainian words and phrases that provided an authenticity. Eight stories were published as ‘Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka’. Seemingly all at once fame and fortune arrived. Gogol was hailed by his contemporaries, including Pushkin, as a pre-eminent writer of Russian literature.
His success continued with his brilliant plays ‘The Inspector General’ and the comedy ‘The Marriage for the Theatre’, both being highly acclaimed.
In 1834 he became Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg but with little academic or teacher training, failed to adequately fulfil many of his duties and soon resigned this post. With no obligations and using his earnings from his writing, which now included the impressionistic and immortal ‘Dead Souls’, Gogol travelled around Europe, spending the most time in Rome where he studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera.
In the 1840s Gogol became preoccupied with a need to purify his soul and embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In tandem he fell under the influence of a strict and austere spiritual ascetic who persuaded him to observe strict fasts that, allied with his depression and deteriorating health, contributed to his death on 21st April 1852 at the age of only 43.
Gogol had a profound and enduring impact on literature which can be evidenced from his masterpiece, ‘The Cloak’, more popularly although wrongly translated as ‘The Overcoat’ published in 1841. A hundred years later Vladamir Nabokov called it ‘The greatest Russian short story ever written.’
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol was a Russian novelist and playwright born in what is now considered part of the modern Ukraine. By the time he was 15, Gogol worked as an amateur writer for both Russian and Ukrainian scripts, and then turned his attention and talent to prose. His short-story collections were immediately successful and his first novel, The Government Inspector, was well-received. Gogol went on to publish numerous acclaimed works, including Dead Souls, The Portrait, Marriage, and a revision of Taras Bulba. He died in 1852 while working on the second part of Dead Souls.
More audiobooks from Nikolai Gogol
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overcoat: A Nikolai Gogol Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Top 10 Short Stories - European: The top ten short stories of all time written by European authors. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to The Cloak aka The Overcoat
Related audiobooks
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Short Stories of Franz Kafka: Jewish master of the bizarre and creator of Kafkaesque Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Honest Thief Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Penal Colony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fathers and Sons Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lady with the Dog Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Much Land Does A Man Need Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy: Epic collection of stories from the grandmaster of literature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gift Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kiss Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Double and The Gambler Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Coffin Maker Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Sportsman's Notebook: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Christmas Tree and the Wedding Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lazarus (CopyrightGroup) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anton Chekhov - A Short Story Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDead Souls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Notes from Underground and The Gambler Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gambler Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Hunger Artist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Dog's Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dream of a Ridiculous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master and Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kreutzer Sonata Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Short Stories For You
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gingerbread Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nightmares & Dreamscapes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just After Sunset: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best of Edgar Allan Poe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Drunken Fireworks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collected Stories and Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream and Other Works Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5UR Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Orgy: A Short Story About Desire Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Skeleton Crew: Selections Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Full Dark, No Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Her Body and Other Parties: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Minority Report and Other Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stories of Your Life and Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night of the Living Rez Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5LT's Theory of Pets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales of Mystery and Imagination Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maktub: An Inspirational Companion to The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Cloak aka The Overcoat
16 ratings1 review
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5What is with the woman voice? Terrible narration. I’ll have to read it instead