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Dead Souls

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.Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) was born in the Ukraine. His experience of St Petersburg life informed a savagely satirical play, “The Government Inspector”, and a series of brilliant short stories including “Nevsky Prospekt” and “Diary of a Madman”. For over a decade, Gogol laboured on his comic epic “Dead Souls” – before renouncing literature and burning parts of the manuscript shortly before he died. If you enjoyed “Dead Souls”, you might like Fyodor Dostoyevsksy`s “The Brothers Karamazov”, also available in “Penguin Classics”. “Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange”. (Vladimir Nabokov). “I admire the way in which Maguire has kept his own brilliantly variegated vocabulary away from 20th-century phrases, without ever looking parodic or antiquarian”. (A.S. Byatt, author of “Possession”).

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