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  • Published: 24 November 2004
  • ISBN: 9780140448078
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $26.00

Dead Souls




'Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange' Vladimir Nabokov

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.

  • Published: 24 November 2004
  • ISBN: 9780140448078
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $26.00

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the authors

Nikolai Gogol

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are known for their highly-acclaimed translations of Dostoevsky, Gogol ad Tolstoy. Their translation of The Brothers Karamazov won America's prestigious PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize.