Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls (1997)

Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls, translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Vintage, 1997).

ISBN: 9780679776444 | 432 pages | EPUB


Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls" -- deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them -- we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition.

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.