Product Description

'Rus! Russ!...Everything within you is open, desolate, and flat; your squat towns barely protrude above the level of your wide plains, marking them like little dots, like specks; here is nothing to entice and fascinate the onlooker's gaze. Yet whence this unfathomable, uncanny force that draws me to you?' Although Dead Souls (1842) was largely composed by Gogol during self-imposed exile in Italy in the late 1830s, his last work remains to this day the most essentially Russian of all the great novels in Russian literature. As we follow its hero Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned unscrupulous confidence man, about the Russian countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise, there unfolds before us a gallery of characters worthy in comic range of Chaucer, Rabelais, Fielding and Sterne. With its rich and ebullient language, ironic twists and startling juxtapositions, Dead Souls stands as one of the most dazzling and poetic masterpieces of the nineteenth century. This brilliant new translation by Christopher English is complemented by a superb introductory essay by the pre-eminent Gogol scholar, Robert Maguire.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #460053 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A socially adept newcomer fluidly inserts himself into an unnamed Russian town, conquering first the drinkers, then the dignitaries. Everyone finds him amiable, estimable and agreeable, but what exactly is Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov up to? Something, it transpires, that will soon throw the town "into utter perplexity".

After more than a week of entertainment and "passing the time, as they say, very pleasantly", he gets down to business--heading off to call on some landowners. More pleasantries ensue before Chichikov reveals his bizarre plan. He'd like to buy the souls of peasants who have died since the last census. The first landowner looks carefully to see if he's mad, but spots no outward signs. In fact, the scheme is innovative but by no means bonkers. Even though Chichikov will be taxed on the supposed serfs, he will be able to count them as his property and gain the reputation of a gentleman owner. His first victim is happy to give up his souls for free--less tax burden for him. The second, however, knows Chichikov must be up to something, and the third has his servants rough him up. Nonetheless, he prospers.

Dead Souls is a feverish anatomy of Russian society (the book was first published in 1842) and human wiles. Its author tosses off thousands of sublime epigrams--including, "However stupid a fool's words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man," and is equally adept at biting satire: "Where is he," Gogol interrupts the action, "who, in the native tongue of our Russian soul, could speak to us this all-powerful word: forward? who, knowing all the forces and qualities, and all the depths of our nature, could, by one magic gesture, point the Russian man towards a lofty life?" Flannery O'Connor, another writer of dark genius, declared Gogol "necessary along with the light". Though he was hardly the first to envision property as theft, his blend of comedy, the fantasy and morality is sui generis. --Kerry Fried

About the Author
Robert A. Maguire is Bakmeteff Professor of Russian Studies at Columbia University, New York.

Customer Reviews

A flawed gem - caveat emptor
Not so much a review but a word of warning to other non-specialists out there, like myself.
I LOVED this book. Beautifully translated, with brilliant observations and wry humour, it is a very easy read ... until it stops. Gogol never completed the novel and a frustrating time is therefore had by the poor sap like me who wants to know "what happens next".
Don't give up on it because of this - what is there really IS worth it - just be warned!

Worth it just for the laughs
One of the drollest books imaginable.Drunkeness, absolute idiocy, and tender yet wildly misplaced poetry abound. It may be a bit macab, but the parables of manipulation and human foibles are so outrageously funny that one can skip much of the modernist movement and go straight for the fountainhead. What sets it apart is its originality, and what REALLY sets it apart is that Gogol, or the narrator, appears to be thoroughly unaware how droll the tone is, yet is still self-conscious and somewhat lyrical. Chichicov is the illegitimage grandson of Sancho. Kafka meets Beckett and gets runover by a tripping Marx. Nothing is sacred: A lying schemer is compared to a character in the Aeneid, and a group of men crowding around an pale faced demoiselle is compard to a bunch of flies flitting about sugar. Creative bliss to the maximum, and no need to wallow in meaning unless one is willing to write one's own parables as critiques. The outright antithesis of Hemingway.

Quite an easy read and humorous on one level
Despite its gloomy sounding title, this is actually quite funny on some levels, in terms of the verbal approaches Chichikov uses in order to deceive various landowners and make them give him money for the serfs who have died on their estates. At the same time, it is quite chilling in the casual assumptions of ownership over the lives and bodies of these serfs, treating them as so many possessions. I thought this book dragged slightly in the middle, but was mostly quite an easy read.