Publisher's Synopsis
Together with Aleksandr Pushkin, the creator of the great Russian prose of the 19th century that was to be prolonged in Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol captured in "Dead Souls" the same acid and satirical vision of Russia that permeates his "Histories of Saint Petersburg". among which are such famous stories as "The nose" and "The coat." The publication in 1842 of the present novel, which reached notable repercussions and raised a stir, earned him great fame and consolidated his reputation as a great storyteller. Its protagonist, Chichikov, devises the plan to buy "dead souls" -that is, the property of deceased servants - in order to be able to request a loan from the State, with this property as collateral, before the next census. The account of his wanderings through rural Russia, as well as its result, is one of the heights of the literature of this country, in which Gogol's talent can be appreciated not only for satire, but also for the description of unforgettable characters.
