How The Two Ivans Quarrelled

An 1841 painting of Russian author Nikolai Gogol. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis Sophia Martelli Sunday 23 October 2011 00.05 BST Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Shares 5 Comments 0 Save for later Pre-revolutionary Russian literature might not resound with comedy (War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Eugene Onegin, anyone?) but this collection of "Russian comic stories" is not an oxymoron. Any story that starts: "Once upon a time there were two generals. They were both nitwits, and so, in no time at all, by a wave of some magic wand, they found themselves on a desert island," as Mikhail Saltykov's "Two Generals" does, gets this reviewer's vote for irreverence, not to mention surreal scene-setting.