Dead Souls

Who is this eccentric man who roams the vast Tsarist Empire in search of the souls of the dead? He asks for neither honey nor wheat, nor does he desire hemp or cattle; the only merchandise Chichikov seeks to purchase on his visits to various landowners is the corpses of deceased servants whose deaths have not been recorded in the census. What kind of madness drives someone to acquire a collection of corpses? Under the pretext of saving their owners from paying taxes, our hero aims, through this trade in souls, to obtain government subsidies granted to those who own a certain number of serfs, thus reinventing himself as an eccentric nobleman.

In this masterpiece, the first great novel in Russian literature, Gogol not only paints a detailed and highly realistic picture of harsh rural life, but also, through his bold and ingenious prose, crafts a relentless and devastating social satire.

This edition also includes two drafts of the unpublished second part of the work.