Dead Souls (Classics) - Softcover

Magarshack, David; Gogol, Nikolay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140441131 ISBN 13: 9780140441130

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1974

Synopsis

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of 'N', visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these 'souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all,the devilish con man Chichikov. Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

About this title

About the Author

Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) was born in the Ukraine and left for St Peterburg at the age of 19 where he published a collection of short stories and for a short time held the post of professor of history at the university. Gogol's experience of life in St Petersburg informed his savagely satirical play, The Government Inspector, and a series of brilliant short stories including Nevsky Prospekt and Notes of a Madman. From 1836 to 48, Gogol lived abroad, mainly in Rome, where he was working on his comic epic Dead Souls - a work he wrestled with for the rest of his life before renouncing literature and burning parts of the manuscript shortly before he died.

Synopsis

Although largely composed by Gogol during self-imposed exile in Italy in the late 1830s, this work remains perhaps the most essentially "Russian" of novels. The reader follows Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned confidence man, through the countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1974
• ISBN 10: 0140441131
• ISBN 13: 9780140441130
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384