The Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov wakes one morning to discover that his nose has disappeared. Unbeknownst to him, it has mysteriously found its way into a loaf of bread on the barber Yokovlevich's breakfast table. The barber attempts to dispose of it, but when Kovalyov steps out onto the St Petersburg streets, he finds his nose, now the size of a human, wearing a gold-embroidered uniform and travelling around in a carriage...

Andrea Camilleri (born in Sicily in 1925) is a best-selling and prize-winning Italian theatre and television director and author, perhaps most famous for his Inspector Montalbano series of crime novels. Camilleri has won numerous awards in Italy, France and the UK, and his work has been translated into many languages, including French, German and Japanese.