Nikolai Gogol’s novella Taras Bulba has a lot to teach us, but defies categorization. Taras Bulba describes an intentionally anachronistic war between Poles and Zaporozhian cossacks set some time in the early 1600s. I read the book in Russian, and unfortunately it was a little beyond my current comprehension level, but I mostly managed. Speaking of language, Taras Bulba is one book that probably gets lost in translation; though Gogol wrote in Russian he used many Ukrainianisms. Cossacks are козаки rather казаки, Taras Bulba’s younger son’s name is written as Андрий (Andriy) rather than the usual Андрей (Aundrey), for a …