What's remarkable about this collection is the range of stories – everything from historical epic to ghost stories to stories that focus on the dynamics of human relationships. "Taras Bulba" is the longest piece in this collection and it stands out from the other stories in terms of grandeur and scale. The novella is Gogol's attempt to create an Ukrainian national epic as he romanticizes a military campaign by the Zaporozhian Cossacks against the Poles. Gogol reflects the biases and prejudices of his time – the depiction of Poles and Jews in the novella is problematic for us today. The rest of the stories share a much narrower focus than "Taras Bulba."

Taras Bulba and Other Tales is an accessible collection of novellas and short stories of Nikolai Gogol and is an excellent introduction to the work of this classic Russian author.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol ( 31 March 1809 – 4 March 1852) was a Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity. Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque . His early works were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire, leading to his eventual exile. The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", round out the tally of his best-known works.