The Nose is a short comic story set in St Petersburg. A government official named Kovalyov wakes one morning to find that his nose has vanished from his face, leaving only a smooth patch. He sets out to find it, and soon meets it again in the city, dressed as a person of higher rank than his own. The story treats an absurd event in a perfectly serious tone, poking fun at status, vanity and bureaucracy. It is a classic of the surreal in literature.