Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36131 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-29
• Original language: Russian
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

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 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. Robert A Maguire is Professor and Head of Department at Columbia University. He is the prize-winning translator of Petersburg by Andrei Bely (Indiana UP, 1979) and several contemporary Polish poets, author of Exploring Gogol (1996) and editor of Gogol from the Twentieth Century (1995). He has received a Ford Foundation Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and several awards for his service to his field of study and his published works.

Customer Reviews

Tragically unfinished
Gogol toppled into madness and died before he could finish this novel, and only the first book of the three is fully completed. The second he purportedly completed, before destroying in a moment of religious fanaticism. Consequently there is only about a third of what he apparently composed here, and a tiny fraction of his proposed third part.
I've long been a fan of Russian literature, and have recently been plodding through Lermontov and Turgenev, who are made to seem pale beside Gogol, although they are undoubtedly brilliant authors. 'Dead Souls' is more comic than many a Russian novel, and sits more in line with Dostoevsky in his more existential themes (there are big parallels with Kafka thematically too). I won't cover the plot of the novel here (others have already done that), but simply recommend this as one of the essential works of Russian literature. Tragically, one can only imagine how phenomenal the completed version would have been.

Awfull!
I know this is a classic. And I appreciate that it is a good look into/critique of Russian society in Gogol's day... However, quite frankly this was one of the most boring books I have ever read. Classic or not the fact is that it is boring. It fails to grip the reader past the 50th page and even the author's untimely death (the book is actually unfinished) was unable to make it a gripping read. When I finished it I was actually glad that the book was unconcluded as it saved me reading another page! If you want to read Gogol, read his short stories - they're much better.

A daring con man, and a stratagem that involves buying and mortgaging "dead souls" !
"Dead souls" (1842) is a book written by an important Russian author, Nikolai Gogol, that criticizes the Russian society of his time by means of a well-told satire.

The main character of "Dead souls" is Chichikov, a man that wants to be rich, and turns into a con man in order to achieve that objective. His stratagem is simple, yet strange: he will buy "dead souls" from landowners, and then mortage them in order to earn a lot of money. That was possible because in pre 1861 Russia, landowners owned serfs ("souls") that helped to farm the land, and that could be bought, sold or mortgaged whenever the owners felt the need to do so. The "dead souls" were serfs that had already died, but that were still listed as living in property registers.

Will Chichikov be able to buy "dead souls" at a low price and then mortgage them, turning into a rich landowner? Or will his proposal seem so outlandish to others that he won't be able to convince them that he is not joking? You will find answers to those questions in this book, along with beautiful (albeit extremely long) descriptions of the Russian scenery.

All in all, I can say that I liked this book, even though some parts of the manuscript are missing, and you go from the middle of the story to the last chapter in a rush, without knowing exactly what happened. If you know that will happen (I didn't), and still want to read "Dead souls", go ahead. At 3.5 stars, it is worth your time :)

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