The first story in this volume How the Two Ivans Quarrelled is an amusing portrayal of two
exceptionally close friends the mortal insult that drives them apart and the ensuing chaos
that occurs. This is Gogol's humour at its best where the most irrelevant-seeming details and
turns of phrase take on a bizarre life of their own. Ivan Krylov's Panegyric in Memory of My
Grandfather has an ingenuous narrator praise the nobility and modesty of a landowner whose
actions prove him to be otherwise. The two tales by Mikhail Saltykov are satirical attacks on
civil servants and Russia's autocracy. The final piece Tolstoy's Ivan the Fool is a playful
and allegorical critique of contemporary Russian society. Together they represent some of
Russia's finest comic writing before the twentieth century.
