Taras Bulba

About the work

The old Cossack colonel Taras Bulba welcomes his sons Ostap and Andriy home from the Kyiv academy and soon takes them to the Zaporozhian Sich. A war begins in which each of them will have to choose between duty, comradeship and his own heart. A heroic tale of the Cossacks told on an epic scale and with lively humour.

Contents

1. IChapter 1
2. IIChapter 2
3. IIIChapter 3
4. IVChapter 4
5. VChapter 5
6. VIChapter 6
7. VIIChapter 7
8. VIIIChapter 8
9. IXChapter 9
10. XChapter 10
11. XIChapter 11
12. XIIChapter 12

How it was written

The first version appeared in the collection Mirgorod (1835). For his Collected Works of 1842 Gogol substantially revised the text and expanded it to twelve chapters; this is the version given here.

Context

The story is set among the Zaporozhian Cossacks during their wars with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The language is full of Ukrainian and archaic words and the sentences are long, so the text suits confident readers - but the famous battle scenes are worth the effort.

Interesting facts

• Gogol spells the word Cossack as «козак», with an o, throughout the text.
• The first version of 1835 was noticeably shorter than the twelve-chapter second version.
• One of the best-known film adaptations was directed by Vladimir Bortko (2009).