"The Overcoat," written by Nikolai Gogol between 1839 and 1841 and published in 1842, introduces us to one of the most poignant characters in literature: Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, a clerk in the lowest echelons of the civil service, who is outraged by social injustice and the selfish indifference of the powerful and wealthy, and whose fate is to be an...