"The Nose" is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol. Written between 1835 and 1836, while Gogol was living in St. Petersburg, "The Nose" tells the story of a government official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own. The story was originally published in The Contemporary, a literary journal owned by Alexander Pushkin. The use of a nose as the main source of conflict could have been due to Gogol's own experience with an oddly shaped nose, which was often the subject of self-deprecating jokes in letters. The use of iconic landmarks in the story, as well as its sheer absurdity, has made "The Nose" an important part of St. Petersburg's literary tradition. (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)