Dead Souls

Nikolai Gogol

Dead Souls — Dead Souls is Nikolai Gogol’s last novel, and follows the tale of Pavel Chichikov, a down-on-his-luck gentleman determined to improve his lot in life. The story charts his scheme to purchase dead souls—deceased serfs still listed as living in the tax registers—from wealthy landowners. The novel’s satirical take on the state of Russian society at the time leads Chichikov into increasingly difficult circumstances, in his attempts to cheat both the system and the cavalcade of townspeople he meets along the way. Gogol planned the work as a trilogy, but published only the completed first part. He burned the manuscript of the second part, of which only fragments survived. This edition contains the first part and the surviving fragments of the second, ending in mid-sentence; the overall work remains unfinished.