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Dead Souls
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Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls is the great comic masterpiece of Russian literature–a satirical and splendidly exaggerated epic of life in the benighted provinces.
Gogol hoped to show the world “the untold riches of the Russian soul” in this 1842 novel, which he populated with a Dickensian swarm of characters: rogues and scoundrels, landowners and serfs, conniving petty officials–all of them both utterly lifelike and alarmingly larger than life. Setting everything in motion is the wily antihero, Chichikov, the trafficker in “dead souls”–deceased serfs who still represent profit to those clever enough to trade in them.
This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel’s lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.
Gogol hoped to show the world “the untold riches of the Russian soul” in this 1842 novel, which he populated with a Dickensian swarm of characters: rogues and scoundrels, landowners and serfs, conniving petty officials–all of them both utterly lifelike and alarmingly larger than life. Setting everything in motion is the wily antihero, Chichikov, the trafficker in “dead souls”–deceased serfs who still represent profit to those clever enough to trade in them.
This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel’s lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.
475 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1,1842
This edition
- Format
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475 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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September 21, 2004 by Everyman's Library
- ISBN
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9781400043194
- ASIN
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1400043190
- Language
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English
Characters More characters
About the author
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People consider that Russian writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Николай Васильевич Гоголь) founded realism in Russian literature. His works include The Overcoat (1842) and Dead Souls (1842).
Ukrainian birth, heritage, and upbringing of Gogol influenced many of his written works among the most beloved in the tradition of Russian-language literature. Most critics see Gogol as the first Russian realist. His biting satire, comic realism, and descriptions of Russian provincials and petty bureaucrats influenced later Russian masters Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and especially Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Gogol wittily said many later Russian maxims.
Gogol first used the techniques of surrealism and the grotesque in his works The Nose, Viy, The Overcoat, and Nevsky Prospekt. Ukrainian upbringing, culture, and folklore influenced his early works, such as Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka .
His later writing satirized political corruption in the Russian empire in Dead Souls.
Ukrainian birth, heritage, and upbringing of Gogol influenced many of his written works among the most beloved in the tradition of Russian-language literature. Most critics see Gogol as the first Russian realist. His biting satire, comic realism, and descriptions of Russian provincials and petty bureaucrats influenced later Russian masters Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and especially Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Gogol wittily said many later Russian maxims.
Gogol first used the techniques of surrealism and the grotesque in his works The Nose, Viy, The Overcoat, and Nevsky Prospekt. Ukrainian upbringing, culture, and folklore influenced his early works, such as Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka .
His later writing satirized political corruption in the Russian empire in Dead Souls.
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