With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood.
Russia in the 1840s. There is a stranger in town, and he is behaving
oddly. The unctuous Pavel Chichikov goes around the local estates buying
up 'dead souls'.
These are the papers relating to serfs who
have died since the last census, but who remain on the record and still
attract a tax demand. Chichikov is willing to relieve their owners of
the tax burden by buying the titles for a song. What he does not say is
that he then proposes to take out a huge mortgage against these
fictitious citizens and buy himself a nice estate in Eastern Russia.
Will he get away with it? Who will rumble him? Does this narrative
contain a deeper message about Russia itself or the spiritual health of
humanity?There is much interest and some suspense in considering these
issues, but the real pleasure of this story lies elsewhere. It is an
enjoyable comic romp through a retarded part of a backward country, a
picaresque series of grotesque portraits, situations and conversations
described with Gogolian humour based mainly on hyperbole. This is, quite
simply, the funniest book in the Russian language before the twentieth
century.
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
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