Gogol Plays and Petersburg Tales, new translations by Christopher English (OUP, £6.99 in UK)

This collection includes six Gogol stories, among them The Overcoat, which according to Dostoevsky was the starting point of Russian prose fiction ("we have all come from under Gogol's Overcoat"). He was also the starting point for modern "absurdist" literature, and Diary of a Madman clearly anticipate's Expressionism. The plays are The Government Inspector, as funny to read as it is to see or hear (it works excellently on radio, as I remember) and Marriage, which is more obviously farce, and fairly broad farce at that. Apart from a lengthy preface, the volume also includes a Gogol chronology and even maps of St Petersburg as it was in his time.