Dead Souls (Penguin Classics)
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Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange. (Vladimir Nabokov)"
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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.
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First Sentence
Through the gate of a hostelry in a provincial capital that will remain nameless rolled a small, rather handsome britska on springs, of the kind in which bachelors travel: retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains,1 landowners possessing a hundred or so peasant souls - in a word, all those who are known as gentlemen of the middling sort. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Through the gate of a hostelry in a provincial capital that will remain nameless rolled a small, rather handsome britska on springs, of the kind in which bachelors travel: retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains,1 landowners possessing a hundred or so peasant souls - in a word, all those who are known as gentlemen of the middling sort. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Russian lit that's funny and very readable,
By
This review is from: Dead Souls (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
This is a deservedly famous book by a great but troubled author. 'Dead Souls' was in fact just the first novel in a planned trilogy, as Gogol went mad and died, having destroyed most of part two, before completing his grand plan. What's left is a bizarre, unique and often amusing story about a man travelling through provincial Tsarist Russia, buying dead souls (ie serfs who had died but were still listed as alive), as part of a large scale con. The characters he encounters on his way are very memorable and brilliantly drawn, and the style teeters on the edge of absurdity without ever quite toppling over. Also included are tantalising fragments of the beginning of book two, but this novel stands on its own, and has the most wonderful, magical ending. 'Dead Souls' is well worth a read as it is an accessible classic of Russian literature without the heavy, doom laden psychology of Dostoyevsky or the vast panorama and cast of characters employed by Tolstoy. You will never read anything else like this one.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tragically unfinished,
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This review is from: Dead Souls (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
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.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A daring con man, and a stratagem that involves buying and mortgaging "dead souls" !,
By M. B. Alcat "Curiosity killed the cat, but sa... (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Dead Souls (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
"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 :) Belen Alcat
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