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Dead Souls
Nikolay Gogol
ISBN: 9780140448078
(PB - E)
€
Nikolai Gogol's 'epic poem in prose', Dead Souls is a damning indictment of a corrupt society, translated from the Russian with an introduction and notes by Robert A. Maguire in Penguin Classics.
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 'dead souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a aristocrat. In this ebullient picaresque 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 (1842), Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.
In his introduction, Robert A. Maguire discusses Gogol's life and literary career, his depiction of Russian society, and the language and narrative techniques employed in Dead Souls. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading, appendices, a glossary, map and notes.
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