The Fair at Sorochyntsi

"The Fair at Sorochyntsi" by Nikolai Gogol is a short story set in a Ukrainian village in 1800. A man travels with his daughter and wife to a fair to sell some of their belongings. Their lives are quickly turned upside down when a young cossack asks for the hand of the daughter and a demon makes an appearance. The story mixes the macabre with humor, yet with romance at its core. "The Fair at Sorochyntsi" was also turned into a comic opera by Modest Mussorgsky, though unfinished and completed by others after his death.