Weights and Measures (Penguin Modern Classics)

'Every man had not only a weak spot but also a criminal one'

Athis wife's insistence, upstanding citizen and artillery officer AnselmEibenschütz leaves his beloved Austro-Hungarian army and takes up acivilian post, as Inspector of Weights and Measures in a remotebackwater near the Russian border. At first he does everything by thebook, but gradually he finds himself adrift in a world of pettycorruption, bribery and drunkenness - and undone by his passion for thebeautiful gypsy Euphemia. A haunting evocation of Eastern Europe'sborderlands in the early twentieth century, Weights and Measures is also the story of the disintegration of a good man.

Translated by David Le Vay

Reviews

Written with the melancholy wit and grace of Gogol... passages of electrifying beauty