Creator along with Aleksandr Pushkin of the great Russian prose of the 19th century that would continue in Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) began his brilliant literary career with the stories that he grouped under the generic title of "The Evenings of Dikanka" and which he published in 1831.
In this first book, the most casual and joyful of his entire production, the author, using themes and characters from popular literature and folklore and influenced by the romantic currents then in vogue, offers a smiling, poetic and fabulous vision of his life. Native Ukraine. In this work, humorous stories, horror stories, enchantment stories, fantastic events predominate, always seasoned with period details, reliable descriptions of customs and attire and a certain exotic flavor. Unanimously recognized as the greatest stylist in the Russian language, in this first work Gogol already gives proof of his extraordinary narrative talent and his capacity for poetic description of natural settings, landscapes, lights and environments.