This tale by the Russian writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was published in 1835 as part of the collection "Mirgorod" and is considered a classic of Russian-language fantastic literature. The Wij is a colossal creation of popular imagination. This is how the Little Russians refer to the king of the gnomes, whose eyelids reach down to the ground. "This entire story is a folk tradition. I did not want to change anything about it and present it here almost as simply as I heard it," Gogol describes the main character of this novella.