Dead Souls (Everyman's Library)

Translation: C.J. Hogarth, 143496 words

The first 10 chapters (half the book) have everything that makes a picaresque novel: funny characters, funny adventures and travels. It rolls along at a perfect pace. Gogol is witty and smooth, a suave motor mouth. I wouldn’t say that as a narrator he’s in the way, but he is crowding the reader.

Gogol’s deadpan narrative style is suitable for comedy. The main character, Chichikov describes an acquaintance, Sobakevitch, as “a bear, and nothing but a bear” and goes on to comment that everything in his house, including the furniture, resembles him. Another acquaintance, Nozdrev, is not only a fully-developed character, but funny. In the scene where Chichikov was speaking with the governor, Nozdrev forces kisses on him, asking the governor’s indulgence, “You will excuse me if I kiss him, will you not, your Excellency?” Chichikov himself is later depicted to resemble a W. C. Fields type character.

If you want to know why Chichikov wants to buy dead souls (dead serfs), you can read about it in Chapter 11.

Chapter 11 is poetic and proceeds with Chichikov’s biography in the form of a documentary (not much action or dialogue). This is followed by Part 2, consisting of 4 extremely long chapters, all of them are incomplete. That is, there are missing pages from the original manuscript. In fact the end of the novel is missing. Part 2 is everything a picaresque novel isn’t. There’s still humor, but it’s mostly about God, Russia and estate management. It’s as though young Fyodor Dostoyevsky held a gun on him and forced him to write his kind of novel in part 2.

Part 1 is a satire as picaresque novels are and part 2 is more like a philosophical novel, dealing with the issues raised in the satire.

3 stars

The wit. The prose. Sheer madness of the story. The narrative style. Characters and their idiosyncrasies. Descriptions. All oh so perfect. No wonder it is an ageless classic. One star taken away as most of this is true only in Book 1. Let's not talk about the second part!

Dead Souls is in 1830's Russia, but it could be anywhere even now. All its clownish characters invoke laughter while making some deep points about our characters, then and now, there or here or anywhere else. The author's descriptions transport us to the 1840s Russia without the aid of any visuals. The conversationalist style is post-neo-modern invented by the kids of the perpetually following century. The persistent tomfoolery is apparently puerile but almost always with deep meanings or observations. And all this is built on an absolutely ingenious premise.

The only frustration is when Book 1 suddenly ends and shifts to a new setting which is famously incomplete, but more disappointingly just not a patch on what comes in the first part.

This is a brilliant and a very entertaining book. The story revolves around a man named Chichikov who travels around the Russian countryside sometime in the middle of the 19th century buying up ownership titles for serfs who have died. The advantage to the seller was that they didn't have to pay taxes for the dead slaves anymore. Chichikov's goal in doing this remains unknown until the end of the book. The term for books like this is, I think, character driven. We're not quite sure who the main character is and why he does what he does. But the descriptions of what he does and of how the people around him react to his actions are insightful, full of humor and empathy, and very entertaining to read. A caveat is that you probably won't like this book much if you need an action driven plot to move things along. Another aspect of this book I didn't like came out only in the last chapter. It became the drop of vinegar in what otherwise would've been a perfectly good jar of honey. The author tells us how his main reason for writing this book was to expose certain faults that were very common in the characters of Russian people. He seems to ignore the fact that these faults are in fact universal. The reason why they seemed so prevalent in Russia was not the people, but the political and economic setup of 19th century Russia. (Same thing goes for 20th and 21st century Russia, but that's a different topic...) This is something the author was either unaware of (unlikely), or didn't mention to avoid problems with government censors. Of course, another possibility is that Gogol wrote this book to point out the flaws in Russian economic and political systems in a very subtle way, which was the most that a published writer could do at the time.

Books can measure how much things can never be the same again. Russian novels were so new to me in high school that I tried to learn the Russian language in my freshman year at the University of Michigan, where I expected to learn lots of brain skewers to stump American commercial attitudes. The plot of Gogol's Dead Souls has elements of empire as a euphemism for voodoo zombies like living slime on rocks and rills, so intimate familiarity as an eldritch attitude should keep me churning the mixed bag that is going nowhere fast.

For many years, the idea of reading Dead Souls seemed like a forbidding prospect. I expected tom rather grim expose of Russian melancholy.

I finally got round to reading it because the subject matter, a man purchasing the identities of deceased serfs who are still recorded as being alive in order to obtain a huge mortgage, chimed with something I was dealing with at work.

The book is a comedy and there is no melancholy or tragedy. It is a picaresque comedy in which the hero, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov travels around rural Russia buying souls from various eccentric landowners. The pleasure of reading this is meeting these bizarre characters and also the hyperbolic use of language.

Gogol did not finish the novel and in in some ways it didn't quite hang together. There are many disparate characters and I confess that I was a bit confused at times. However, it remains an entertaining and often thoughtful read.

Gogol stands at the pinnacle of Russian literature along with Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Dead Souls is a great book that can be read and reread to appreciate at many levels:

 as a funny story with a cast of caricatures including its lovable, pathetic hero
 as a portrait of Russian rural life
 as a commentary about human motivations and behavior
 as ironic comment about idealists who claim to have big answers for changing society
 as an exploration of the peasant mentality
 as a prelude to the chaos that would result from Communist revolution
 … and like all of Gogol’s rich works, as a poem full of deep feeling about Russia and this world.

In Gogol’s writing there is art in every word, every description. Each side remark and observation adds to the descriptive power, the range of emotions – and to our ability to see through Gogol’s perceptive eyes.

For that, we need excellent translation. Unfortunately, the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation ruins the book with an overworked, oversmoothed, overintellectualized rendition that removes the startling power of the original.

You’re much better off reading the older, widely available D. J. Hogarth translation.

Don’t believe me? Try this 5-minute test. Read the first page or two of Dead Souls in the Pevear translation (click on “Look Inside”, then “First Pages”) – you’ll see that it’s overworked, convoluted, and dull. Now go to the store’s listing of the Dover Thrift Edition of the book, which uses the Hogarth translation, and read the same two pages. You’ll immediately see sharp, crisp, clear writing that captures the intensity and feeling of Gogol.

I’ve read both translations. The Hogarth translation will keep a treasured position on my shelf. I tossed the other one.

Nikolay Gogol lived a short and troubled life. He did manage to write one of the classic novels of Russian literature the immortal Dead Souls.
In this satirical novel we meet the rogue Chichikov (his name in Russian means " a sneeze. Chichikov is a government worker who has been dismissed due to smuggling. The crafty con man decides to buy up the dead souls of peasants from Russian landowners who have to pay a tax on them. He hopes to do this in order to be perceived as a wealthy landowner. In the second part of the novel we see him actually buying land, getting in trouble with the law and departing the unknown provincial town where he hoped to reside.
As Chichikov travels the vast expanses of Russia he takes with him two foolish and dumb servants. He travels in a fast moving britska carriage drawn by three spirited horses. Our "hero" (the term is used ironically)
is single and always in search of a young and rich wife. As he interacts with the landowners over their dead souls we meet the aristocratic landowner segment of Russia. The landowners are drawn with a humorous tongue in cheek pen as Gogol points fun at the powers that be. Gogol relishes attacking the corrupt and inept governmental officials in small town Russia.
Chichikov is rumored to be many different people. Napoleon in disguise!
A seducer of the police chief's fetching daughter! A counterfeiter and a rogue! A wealthy eccentric landowner! He is easily adept at pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible estate owners.
Gogol envisaged his work to encompass three volumes but only completed part one. Part II is included in the Penguin Editon in its incompleted state of composition.
Gogol had a fanstastic imagination and often his work achieves a theatre of the absurd level of humor. He influenced later writers in Russian who used his satire, irony and flights of fancy to take the nineteenth century Russian novel to greatness. Enjoy this fine Penguin Revised Edition of a true classic!

Having worked my way slowly through a handful of Russian classics (Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, Gorky, Nabokov), I naively based my expectations of Gogol on a stereotype aggregated from these literary giants- profound insight into human nature amplified by the trials of an oppressed society. There's certainly no lack of keen insight into human nature in this satire about an ambitious but landless citizen's ambition to marry the governor's daughter by playing a loophole in the system to build his status. Gogol captures both the mundane swirl of gossip and speculation surrounding the first rumors that the protagonist is buying dead souls at low cost, as well as the profound sense that mankind has "succeeded again and again in losing themselves in back alleys in broad daylight... trudging wearily after a mirage." What distinguishes Gogol is his comic genius in the absurd details of his descriptions and dialogue. Character traits are surely exaggerated, but strangely convincing. One prospective seller tries to include a German barrel organ or hounds in the deal for dead souls ("Barrel ribs beyond imagination, paws so padded that they don't even leave a mark on the ground!"). Another mocks his persistence ("Like a parrot, you keep answering the same thing to whatever you're told- two rubles- two rubles..."). Two characters are deadlocked at a doorway for a good ten minutes, each trying to be deferential to let the other pass first. Even the importance of food is never overlooked ("the pie was very good in its own right, and now, after all the trouble he had with the old woman, it tasted even better"). Great book.

Nikolai Gogol had a keen ability to write dark humor. While many of his short stories border on silliness, "Dead Souls" is a scathing rebuke of provincial life in his homeland. Though many reviewers focus on the humor, the writing is also intelligent and an enlightening perspective on life in this era.

To begin the story, Chichikov is dismissed from a position of comfort in civil service. Feeling cheating by the system, he searches for a way to make the system work for him. As a matter of speaking, he becomes a con-man. Beginning his pursuit, he enters the first town with intentions of becoming friendly with the locals. After being accepted, he turns to business and his unlikely scheme begins to unhatch. He begins by purchasing the "souls" of peasants who have died since the last census. Even though Chichikov will be taxed on the supposed serfs, he will be able to count them as his property and gain the reputation of a gentleman owner.

Buying "dead souls" becomes more difficult as people become curious of Chichikov's graft. While the plan seems staggered as he leaves the town, Chichikov's desires evolve as the story draw to its conclusion.

Though the passages which focus on the scenary slow the pace, "Dead Souls" read very quickly. The witty prose and absurd plot keep the reader's attention peaked. These qualities make "Dead Souls" stand as one of the great works of Russian literature.

Chichikov is one of the most well-sketched characters I've encountered in Russian literature. A wheeler-dealer who scours the countryside in a scheme to acquire land, wealth and power, this anti-hero spends the first part of the novel in shallowness, learning little and suffering self-pity at most. The satire is crystal-clear and at times hilarious.

As the story intensifies and builds, the protagonist exhibits more inner turmoil but barely grazes the surface of morality until Gogol set us up, at last, for a needed sequel. But Dead Souls is an unfinished novel--its sequel of redemption torched by its own author. This first installment is also structurally compromised; Gogol's manuscript is missing entire sections and lines, although translators Pevear and Volokonsky do an admirable job of bringing the story to life.

Dead Souls is a seminal classic, but it'll be a tough slog for many newcomers to 19th century Russian literature. The dialogue is wonderful, but at times the read feels uneven as the author's generally descriptive narrative ranges from passages of gorgeous aesthetics to drier, more difficult-to-follow excursions from the central storyline. Gogol's a great man of letters, and his death in the hands of a religious radical--a torturous situation as horrible as anything the author railed against--is all the more tragic in light of his trajectory. If only he'd left us more.

My Titles
Shadow Fields
Snooker Glen
Dasha

Nikolai Gogol's Dead Soul launches the 'great Russian novel form' with a satire, so apt and so funny, that the novel remains as one of the most popular Russian text ever. Gogol's own personal life may have been a dire disaster, but as a novelist he stands next to only Tolstoy and Dostovesky, as short story writer only Chekov comes close to his fame, and mind you, he preceded them and their writing. He was, alongside Pushkin, one of the major early forces in Russian literary scene. Since all other major novelists from Russia have delved into tragedies and melodramas, going down to philosophical and religious questions, Dead Souls comes as a relief fun read, rather one of the funniest reads.

In Dead Souls, he provides a cast of unforgettable and hilarious characters in episodes that leave you reeling with laughter. The hero or the anti-hero Chichikov or Tchichikov drives from town to town, buying "dead souls" i.e. dead peasants, assuring landowners that this will benefit them as they would pay less tax on their workforce. The tax was based on census numbers, and since many peasants died between two census years, landowners ended up paying taxes on people who didn't exist. Chichikov's brilliant idea was to collect a long list of (dead) peasants he had bought, and use that for getting a estate for himself. The novel tells us a story after story of his meeting his landowners and getting his purchase by a mix of tact, sweet talk, and so on, each purchase is full of absurd and funny details.

Beyond the obvious laughters, the novel provides a very detailed description of Russia in early nineteenth century. The sketches of nature bring alive similes and metaphors that Gogol (who was a failed poet) uses remarkably well. While the observations related to people, customs, bureaucracy and Russia are full of brilliant wit, they in fact recreate a lively and throbbing world to us. The world as it was. The bureaucracy has not changed much since then. Nor have the quacks and hacks and cheats who make fortunes by buying and selling dubious things. Hence Dead Souls has this undying and translatable humor that will keep this book in publication forever.

I would rank Dead Souls alongside Three Men in a Boat, Catch 22, A House for Mr Biswas and The Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy as the novels that made me laugh the most. It has shades of Tolstoy in details it provides about rural life and rich landowners, shades of both Tolstoy and Dostovesky in pointing to certain moral issues (but that is at most an undertone) and maybe he was the one who influenced the style of his more famous successors. If you haven't read Gogol, you definitely need to pick him next.

Another note: Constance Garnett as translator remains my favorite, and Barnes and Noble Classics' renders us a version translated by her.

Gogol is rightly esteemed as the greatest satirist in classical Russian literature, and is certainly a personal favorite among the 19th century authors. "Dead Souls" is, in my humble opinion, his hands-down masterpiece. It doesn't offer the same sitcom-ish humor of "The Government Inspector," which was cutting-edge stuff in its time. Instead, it is riddled from beginning to end with more subtle, but still delightfully amusing vignettes as the enterprising Chichikov goes about his rather unconventional business of building his "estate" by buying up low-priced (i.e. dead) serfs.

I won't elaborate on the storyline, since that has already been done more than adequately in other reviews. It is enough to say that Gogol's brand of humor is both witty and insightful, and caused quite a stir among the intelligentsia of his day. Many, such as Belinski, viewed it as an attack on the corruption and ineptitude of the "establishment," i.e. the tsarist regime. There is certainly an element of that. Others saw it differently, including Gogol himself, if his later writings are rightly interpreted. "Dead Souls" is much more of a commentary on the loss of the Russian soul. It is about the corruption of traditions and cultural distinctives that defined what it meant to be Russian.

Decide for yourself which direction Gogol was coming from. It certainly helps to have some familiarity with the history and culture of the time, but Gogol's commentary is near enough to the surface that those things are not essential to appreciate his work. Either way, don't take it too seriously. Just get a good laugh out of it. I did.

Dead Souls mixes realism and symbolism for a vivid and highly original portrait of Russian life.

Here's a summary: Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town with a bizarre but seductive proposition for local landowners. He proposes to buy the names of their serfs who have died but who are still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them. But what collateral will Chichikov receive for these "souls"? And what does he really have in mind?

Full of larger-than-life Dickensian characters - rogues and scoundrels, landowners and serfs, conniving petty officials, and the wily antihero Chichikov - Dead Souls is a devastating comic satire on social hypocrisy.

It's not just for fans of classic Russian novels!

This edition of Dead Souls is nicely printed and formatted.

This is considered one of the great works of Russian Literature. The ambitious Chichikov schemes to buy up the 'dead souls'( The names of serfs who have died since the last census and are not listed officially as dead) from their previous owners. In doing so he hopes to establish himself as the owner of many ' souls' and by pawning the souls become a wealthy man.

In doing this he travels through Russia meeting a variety of odd and interesting characters. One character,Manilov gives his souls free of charge. Another the greedy Korobotchka makes a bargain of fifteen rubles per soul. Sobakevitch demands a hundred rubles but his rudeness gets him only two- and - one half rubles per soul.

Chichikov pulls it off for a time, is recognized as wealthy, has many ladies running after him, but is last exposed by a character, Nozdrev, who has refused to make a bargain with him.

Gogol's fiercely satirical humor has made this work a Russian reader's delight.

I am not sure however that the humor and the delight translate very well to English.

Dead Souls is an interesting selection for several reasons. Above and beyond its commentary on the topical issues of Gogol's days (serfdom and the slow reforms thereof), sociopolitical satire, and uncommonly maladroit and unsympathetic hero, the book is an important exhibit in the evolution of the Russian language and the solidification of Russian literature.
Chichikov, a Russian customs civil servant, rides his troika into N., an unnamed provincial anytown. His intentions unknown, Chichikov effortlessly wins the hearts of the seemingly superficial officials and landowners, whose hospitality and good cheer seem boundless. Chichikov, though, is courting the kind citizens with a purpose. Soon, he is traveling from house to manor, offering to buy deeds to dead peasants for reasons unknown.
With Chichikov's travels through the Russian countryside, Gogol unleashes his comic insight into Russian society, especially (and unlike many of his shorter stories), rural Russia. Soon, the good hosts are exposed as guileful misers and the munificent oficials as venal and depraved. The sharpest comic exchanges come in Chichikov's haggles with the more incredulous targets - notably, a woman who preposterously suspects a hidden value in dead souls, and Sobakevich - a man bearing more than physical resemblance to a bear.
At the same time, Dead Souls paints for us an unorthodox hero in Chichikov - a morally unscupulous bureaucrat whose only ambition is financial aggrandizement. Relegated to mediocrity since childhood, Chichikov pursues the crass goals set out by his dysfunctional father. Yet Chichikov is not a man, he is a state of mind - one that Gogol saw afflicting much of his beloved Russia. Through Chichikov, and with great humor, Gogol illuminates the decay of human relations and decency in a country and people he loved so dearly.

Before you go any further, please note that only the first "volume" of this novel is worth reading, and you can stop reading at that point without missing a thing. Apparently, Gogol had intended to write three full volumes, but several times in the middle of writing the second volume he burned his manuscripts and by then his "genius" period had passed. P and V's edition only has sketches of the second volume. There are missing pages and missing chapters and unfinished sentences. Reading the second volume was a huge let down. The spark was entirely gone.

Having said that, the first volume was an absolute pleasure to read. Spend time savoring the delicious descriptive flourishes of Gogol as he follows his protagonist, Chichikov, on his journey through rural Russia buying the legal rights to Russian serfs who have passed away. You can only imagine what he's up to.

You can almost hear Gogol chucking as he spins one short tale after another. There is not much action in the 250 page first volume. All the genius and all the pure reading pleasure comes in Gogol's writing style, attitude, and wry humor. It just overwhelms you.

I had a hard time figuring out if Gogol was trying to comment on the larger issue of the state of Russian serfdom in 1840, when he wrote this novel. There are definitely short sections where he stands up for the dignity of these poor souls. He definitely sees the serfs as human beings and not mere chattel. Read the book carefully, but it seems like Gogol may have been trying to slip this theme under the radar screens of the censors who initially made Gogol revise certain portions of his book.

I have no idea how others have translated this text, but I gather that Gogol is one of the more difficult Russian authors to translate. In this respect, P and V have done an excellent job capturing the spirit of Gogol. P and V have also done a translation of Gogol's short stories, which is excellent. You may want to consider buying this too. It includes his famous short story "The Nose" among many other worthwhile works.

Savor the first volume; it goes fast. It's a shame we will never have the second or third.

PS If you get a chance, the Kazimir Malevich painting reporduced multiple times on the cover of the book is in the "Russia!" exhibit at the MoMA. (The painting is supposed to represent a serf.) It was a great show. Go see it.

Nikolai Gogol has a very creative mind as well as a unique style of writing. While reading Dead Souls, one is more likely to view the world from Gogol's point of view than his own. His writing contradicts everything Americans think they know about Russian literature. This book is a discussion of a world whose values are radically flexible. Though the concept can be frightening to those who do not take time to ask questions about their lives, Gogol has used crazy comic genius to exhibit an honest and impartial view on what is known today as "The Human Race." His book shows that humans' actions are motivated by greed and that the idea of money does not have any real significance because the value of everything that is sold is created by the human who is selling it. Gogol has also written the book in such a way that every single sentence is a universe of its own.
Dead Souls takes place in the Russia of the late 1800s, where, unlike in America, one must be born into a prosperous family in order to have opportunities. The main character, Chichikov, is clever enough to develop a scheme in which he can rise from being a petty clerk to a respected landowner. In order to do this, Chichikov moves into a new town, pretending to already be a landowner, and begins a quest to buy the names of dead serfs who have not yet been officially reported dead. Each person that Chichkov presents this offer to has a different reaction, starting with the shy and introverted Manilov. Though he does not understand Chichikov's need for the names of these dead serfs, Manilov is a character that is so desperate for company that it does not take any effort to trick him into selling his dead souls cheaply. However, as Chichikov continues his journey, he starts to deal with more clever landowners who become suspicious of his scheme.
Chichikov finds that the townsmen known as Sobakevich and Nozdrev are much harder to negotiate with. This is because they are more and attempt to trick Chichikov even though in truth, Chichikov is the one who is playing the trick on them. Nozdrev agrees to sell Chichikov his serfs under the condition that he can sell him something else along with the serfs, such as a horse or a pair of hunting dogs. Chichikov, of course, refuses the offer because he owns no land and has nowhere to keep any horses or dogs. Because of this, Nozdrev curses Chichikov and orders two of his guards to beat him up. However, by sheer luck, the police show up at that exact time to arrest Nozdrev because of crimes he committed in the past. Seeing this, Chichikov runs away and immediately sets off to visit Sobakevich. In his encounter with Sobakevich, Chichikov offers him less than one hundredth of what Sobakevich claims is the rightful price. However, the reason for Sobakevich's logic is that he claims the serfs have just as much value now that they are dead as they did when they were alive. In the end, however, Chichikov's stubbornness surmounts Sobakevich's absurd logic and Chichikov ends up buying the souls for the price he offered.
Unfortunately, as they say, "there is no such thing as a perfect crime." In the end of Dead Souls, Chichikov is stabbed in the back by the people he does business with, and does not get away with his ingenious plan. The main thing that Gogol is proving in his novel is that the entire human race is very similar to Chichikov; their interest lies in money and in prosperity. So if human beings are constantly trying to outsmart each other, a perfect society will never be obtained.

I bought a copy of the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide. In that guide the editors selected 45 works of fiction as masterpieces from 375 well known writers of fiction - all written since since Cervantes. In that guide they describe why those 45 books are "masterpieces." Dead Souls is one of the 45 masterpieces, so I bought and read the book along with many others of those 45.

Dead Souls is not a novel but was called "an epic poem" by Gogol, similar to Tolstoy's characterization of War and Peace as not a novel but an "epic in prose." Hence, Dead Souls was not written as a balanced novel and as many critics have pointed out the actual plot is not terribly important. It was written as the first part of a three part trilogy on Russian life, and it was published as "The Adventures of Chichikov." The charm is found not in the overall plot, but it is found in the detailed descriptions of what happens day to day throughout the story.

From what we know, Pushkin suggested the story to Gogol based on the concept that serfs were considered to be the property of the landowner and there might be value in owning the title to dead serfs or "dead souls." Also, the characterization of being a "dead soul" has a second interpretation: it is to imply a moral and spiritual inferiority. So, the theme extends beyond the commercial transactions of buying up "dead souls" from various farm owners.

As a general reader, I was captured by the humour and charm of the daily life of the protagonist, Chichikov, as he travels by horse drawn carriage going from town to town in rural Russia, staying in small hotels or with farmers or rural gentry. In his travels he mixes with the locals in each town and he tries to ingratiate himself with the local officials as part of the process of building trust to find and buy dead souls; that is, he meets land owners and buys the title to those serfs who have recently died. Gogol treats us to a broad picture of daily life in rural Russia including many small details. It is so detailed that we can almost taste the food, smell the smells, and perhaps some will want to buy a horse?

In this work Gogol sets the literary tone for many Russian writers who follow in the 19th century including Dosoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Dostoevsky, was in fact hailed as the new Gogol in the 1840s when he emerged from obscurity and became famous. There are many shorter works by these three authors where one could almost substitute Gogol for the author and one would be hard pressed to make the differentiation, and I reference Dostoevsky's "Poor Folk" as an example of a very "Gogol like" work.

This is a wondeful book that will disappoint few. Since reading this I have read many other Russian works and still think this is one of the better and more charming books of the era. If you like this but want something a bit different, I recommend Chekhov's one and only novel, The Shooting Party.

"Dead souls" (1842) is a book written by an important Russian author, Nikolai Gogol, that criticizes the Russian society of his time by means of a well-told satire.

The main character of "Dead souls" is Chichikov, a man that wants to be rich, and turns into a con man in order to achieve that objective. His stratagem is simple, yet strange: he will buy "dead souls" from landowners, and then mortage them in order to earn a lot of money. That was possible because in pre 1861 Russia, landowners owned serfs ("souls") that helped to farm the land, and that could be bought, sold or mortgaged whenever the owners felt the need to do so. The "dead souls" were serfs that had already died, but that were still listed as living in property registers.

Will Chichikov be able to buy "dead souls" at a low price and then mortgage them, turning into a rich landowner? Or will his proposal seem so outlandish to others that he won't be able to convince them that he is not joking? You will find answers to those questions in this book, along with beautiful (albeit extremely long) descriptions of the Russian scenery.

All in all, I can say that I liked this book, even though some parts of the manuscript are missing, and you go from the middle of the story to the last chapter in a rush, without knowing exactly what happened. If you know that will happen (I didn't), and still want to read "Dead souls", go ahead. At 3.5 stars, it is worth your time :)

Belen Alcat

So much with foreign literature depends on translation. I always wonder if I am reading what was written. As with all Russian lit I have read, if you can find a system to pronounce and keep straight the names, there is a lot of good.

The characters are fascinating and I am a big fan of this period. I wish Gogol had opted to tell the whole tale instead of opting for having segments of the story missing. I guess you could call this a tragic comedy?

Anyway, it was enjoyable. It is my first book by Gogol and the only one I picked up. I will have to add another to the list. Next stop when I go back to Russia is some Chekhov.

First and foremost: is this translation right for you? I read somewhere that Garnett is comparable to eating a healthy salad while Pevear and Volokhonsky are akin to a spicy dish. And that's exactly what you'll get here: more subtle humor in a very tidy package.

At any rate, Dead Souls is different from most anything most immediately because Gogol uses it as an opportunity to teach the reader how to look beyond the text and between the lines to discover why things are in the book and how they relate to the story - he compares one man's living room accents to the man himself, for example. For long stretches, he maintains a healthy dialogue that is never boring, condescending, or excessive.

It's also through this method that Gogol pushes the reader to realize that good characters can't be merely honorable and without blemishes, because such people are boring and, furthermore, nonexistent. The story's "hero," Chichikov, is hardly introduced at the beginning and is therefore easily comparable to a sleazy businessman with some clever plot to become rich and famous. It's not until the final chapter of Book One (the only one that Gogol truly finished) that we really get any background on him, which is when we learn how he got to his desperate situation and we realize that, while he is truly a "bad guy," his motives aren't entirely selfish, that he is desperately trying to build an estate to bequeath to his future progeny. And it's this kind of mixture that Gogol spreads across the town of N.: characters that probably don't exist in real life, but highlight some positive and negative aspects of contemporary Russian society.

And that leads to the last important aspect of Dead Souls: Gogol's sometimes-strained love for Russia. These characters show problems in Russian society, but he explains that most of these are universal (at least amongst the Russian person). Gogol's main argument is against the ever-present theme of contemporary Russian literature: the battle between East and West Europe. In short, we see the influence of an outsider (Chichikov) and that of the countries themselves, especially the infiltration of French culture in Russia's aristocracy.

But what is most remarkable is how Gogol pushes the reader to realize all these things while maintaining the levity and complexity of his short stories (though nowhere near as outlandish as "The Nose"). It's a bit sad that Gogol destroyed much of what he had composed for Book Two, but what is there is undoubtedly a classic.

Gogol's novel follows a mysterious, but believed-to-be-respectable, man as he rambles through the Russian countryside buying legal ownership of dead serfs (who are technically considered to be alive until the next census) from a variety of colorful characters. The author's attitude toward slavery/serfdom seems to be somewhat ambivalent. He focuses mostly on the shallowness, eccentricities, and corruption of the upper classes, but all with a very light humorous touch and an apparent fondness for his native land.

Even though I read the translation by Constance Garnett (who I've been told is the worst possible translator of Russian literature), I enjoyed the finished portion of the book. Part II which Gogol felt was a failure and left in an unfinished and highly fragmentary state (he may have even made an attempt to burn it) was more preachy than charmingly sarcastic, and I can see why some editions omit it entirely. Overall: an amusing (and sometimes disturbing) look at Russian high society in its response to a charming con man.

Perhaps no other novel requires a more exacting translation than Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls." This translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky isn't bad, but it gives the book the Pevear/Volokhonsky treatment ... read their translations of The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina and Dead Souls back to back and you'd think they were written by the same novelist (well, if you're from Mars and had never heard of the books beforehand, that is.)

But as Vladimir Nabokov pointed out in his lectures of "Dead Souls", the greatest of all translations was by Bernard Gilbert Guerney. This version of Dead Souls was recently revised by Susanne Fusso for Yale University Press and I recommend it highly.

So why does translation matter? Because as Nabokov points out in Lectures on Russian Literature, "Dead Souls" is more poem than novel. The plot to "Dead Souls" is almost entirely beside the point ... it all pretty much goes in a circle (by the way, The Wire - The Complete Third Season" was modeled on this style.) Where this novel shines is in its haunting and evocative language. Nabokov points out several mind-blowing techniques that Gogol employs ... one is to take an object, create a metaphor about that object to explain it's importance, introduce another object in that metaphor, then compare the second object to a person ... this being a new character, introduced via a highly elegant segue.

The Pevear/Volokhonsky version picks up most of this, but there are some dreadful "Dead Souls" adaptations out there (especially thisDead Souls version that truncates the action and misses the poetry altogether. Especially awful is this Dead Souls audiobook that the store.com correctly calls abridged, but both Audible.com and iTunes label unabridged.

"Dead Souls" is a deceptively dense book. I recommend reading it along with Nabokov's lectures to get the full effect. Also, don't be deceived into reading the so-called sequel ... Gogol wished these disjointed new tales to be burned at his death and most critics agree, for good reason.

This is an amazingly entertaining novel-- and a classic of world literature.
Chichikov, a likable anti-hero, is buying up the deads to dead serfs so that he can use them as security on a large mortgage from the state. On the surface, this cunning, modern plot is entertaining. But what really is amazing is the characterization and narrative style-- it not only strikes chords in gread works in the Modernist school... it has features that are definitely post-modern. Without this book, it is likely that Kurt Vonnegut or Joseph Heller or any of the great satirists of our time would have had to break the ground that Gogol broke.
Read this book!!!

The strange thing about this unbelievably hilarious novel is that Gogol originally intended it as part of an answer to Dantes Divine Comedy.
Dead Souls is the Inferno, where we are plunged into a world of hypocrites, liars, flatterers and cheats that Dante could never imagine. Russian ladies titter and mumble french platitudes, immoral slave owners haggle over the prices of their (dead) slaves, and the corpulent hero at the center of it all hops from estate to estate, dinner to dinner, until his scheme is found out and his erstwhile admirers run him out of town.
Gogol has a gift for physical description, and he will never throw away a phrase unless it is to launch into a particularly delicious narrative diatribe. He elevates the ugliness of his characters.
Moreover, if this were not enough, to keep the reader (and himself, perhaps) truly engaged, Gogol offers authorly asides about Russian cuisine, the motivation of his characters, and the flaws of his novel...No, this is not done in an annoying, self-indulgent manner that devotees of Seinfeld and David Eggers find so damn amusing.
Dead Souls is satire at its best: Intelligent, fun, and relevant. Reading this novel will put a nasty smirk on your face and make you wish that Gogol had indeed finished his Comedy. Then again, I dont know if the world could handle Gogols take on heaven.

An ambitious man in 19th century rural Russia attempts to increase his wealth and societal rank by purchasing dead peasants who, due to lengthy delays between census-takings, are still on the books. It's a brilliant premise for a Russian novel because it says so much about Russian society, both past and present. In this premise is reflected the endemic corruption of the Russian public sector. It also paints an ugly but not far from accurate picture of moral bankruptcy taken to extremes. And it portrays a prevalent truism that persists in modern-day Russia, namely that the appearance of wealth is just as important as wealth itself.
For the premise alone, this novel deserves to be recognized as an important work in the annals of Russian literature. But the credit for the premise belongs not to Nikolai Gogol, but rather to Alexander Pushkin, Gogol's contemporary and Russia's poet laureate. Pushkin suggested the idea to Gogol, and Gogol enthusiastically developed it into a 400 page novel that could easily have been written in half that length.
Gogol's writing is whimsical and entertaining, but it's also sloppy. Of all the 19th century Russian authors, Gogol is the one who suffered most from not having a word processor. There are structural flaws to this novel that one assumes could have easily been corrected by the author if he only had the ability to cut and paste. There are also numerous passages of the original manuscript that were lost, presumably not by fault of the author, but nonetheless frustrating to the reader. The novel is divided into two volumes, but they are seriously disjointed, and volume two fails to live up to the standard set by the promising beginning.
As a social critique, this is excellent work. So excellent, in fact, that it surprises me that this book made it past the official censors in tsarist Russia. As literature, however, I'd have to give it a less enthusiastic endorsement.

As a narrater Gogol was a genius. This is without a doubt his masterpiece and one of the greatest depictions of russian society ever written. I was surprised to find this very witty which is not what I had expected, And it truly is funny in places.

Also a very ambiguous tale as in that we never find out where it is actually set we only know it as 'the town that will remain nameless' and also on the description of our hero, Chichikov who remains rather like a ghost, we follow his tale but we don't exactly know whom we are following until the end, where his real identity is revealed. i love the way gogol describes the characters especially the drunk manilov, Everything is put in place in exactly the place where it should be.

I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good gripping tale or anyone like me, infatuated with the beautiful culture of old Rus.

Gogol is the master of imagery; in _Dead Souls_ he also shows his skills at hyperbole and satire, showing the vanity and ridiculousness of the Russian gentry in the middle of the 19th century.
The plot of the story revolves around a newcomer to an unnamed Russian village (immeadiately under susupicion being an "outsider"), who manages to charm his way into the local scene as a "harmless fellow." Yet soon his plans are revealed: he wishes to purchase the "souls" of dead serfs, the better to establish himself as a member of the landed gentry.
Gogol's masterpiece is almost Dickensian in its character development (and in the personalities of some of the characters), but on a deeper level comments on the superfulousness of appearance. It is a wonderful, witty and thoroughly enjoyable read. Highly recommended.

Travel through the richness and depth of the Russian soul, through suckling pig and sour cream, pies stuffed with fat juicy catfish tails, poppy seed cakes, pancakes dripping with hot sticky butter...and you get a taste of the genius that Gogol was. A work riddled with humour, irony, and just plain filth of the human condition, parody of rank and file and glorification of the unredeemable. Gogol laughs at us for our frailities and at the same time makes us cringe and repulsed at Chichikov's greed for the filthy lucre. Part I of this book will take you out of yourself and transport you to the ballrooms, farms, pantries and the minds and souls of Mother Russia. How much do I love this book? A little less than spiders of the sea and a whole lot more than stale cabbage soup at the roadside inn!! Just read it!!

...but certainly not what I would call a classic.

The satire in this novel is oversold and thinly veiled, first of all. While I was told that it was about the different kinds of crazy people in the Russian gentry, I think that it is more accurate to say that it is a description of the social gentry of ANY country. The fact that they are Russian only comes across in certain details, otherwise this could have easily been written by Oscar Wilde (although there would certainly be less references to foods).

This novel is comprised of two parts. The first is finished, the second is not. This is important, because the book has a clear theme in the first half, but the second half wanders and has no good idea of where it is going or what it is doing. You can easily acquire whiplash trying to keep up with where there are pages missing in the manuscript, even though the story is published anyway.

All told, the story is entertaining, albeit sometimes a bit staid. The book spends the first portion telling, instead of showing, what Chichikov is like, leaving us to wonder whether we are to be repulsed or admiring of this odd character.

The character development is the weakest part of the novel. In the first portion, there is none. In the second, it is a la deus ex machina, and there is no obvious reasons for the changes that are wrought.

It is a worthwhile book, but certainly not something that I will return to again and again. C.

Harkius

This must be Russian satire, as satire was unheard of during this time. This man made this book amusing and made fun of the so called "rich as determned" by how many souls (serfs) they had. He bought up dead serfs and gained some popularity and status for a while.
Usually 18th and 19 Century Russian literature is serious and did in a suttle way exposed the suppression of the Russian lower class people.
Mr. Golgol approached the matter in a lighter way and some what morbid way. The book was great and have read it twice and have suggested it at our book club which we will discuss in December. Members not aquained with Russian literature and the title is a bit mis leading, turned an eye brow when they heard the title.
Karl Olson

Dead Souls is the kind of literary work the French would call a tour de force. An inspired, single effort of creative brilliance. Much to the author's despair, he was never able to duplicate it. It is also a fine example of the genre called satire. Witty, inventive, satirical but also pleasantly light hearted. Gogol would be the person you'd want to stand next to at a party who can keep you laughing by making fun of all the other guests.

For all that, I had to force myself to finish the second half. As a work of literary humor and satire, Dead Souls is impressive. But after a while it was not varied or deep enough to maintain my interest. It's not a one-note performance. It's more like a three or four-note performance. In comparison, the work of fellow satirist Rabelais is an afternoon of symphonies.

I compared the Pevear translation to Guerney's and chose to read Pevear's because Pevear's English is smoother and much more readable. Guerney's English I found too awkward to be enjoyable.

First things first: Was your mouth watering every time you read they were having "cabbage soup"? Not that cabbage soup is something to lust over but because Gogol can make it so. (Why, Gogol can make a vegetarian crave for a "sucking pig".)

Now, Dead Souls: What an incredible satire on Russian character and tradition!

When I read Gogol's stories, The Madman's Diary, The Coat etc. I called him "a crazy person". I meant it as a compliment. I was referring to his creativity, his choice of odd subject matters and characters, his unique ability to reveal problems in bureaucracy with hilarious satire. I did not know that he eventually really went mad, in the more common sense that we use the term.

Dead Souls has two parts. First part is complete (and published in Gogol's time) and as good as a satiric novel can get. Second part is interrupted with many notes by the editor such as: "Part of the manuscript is missing here". What a shame!

According to an explanation on the cover of the book, the first part of Dead Souls had taken Gogol eight years to write. While writing the second part of the book, Gogol expands his vision and the goal of the book. He imagines a great book consisting of three parts in which he will get to tell the story of Russians from all walks of life.

It is interesting to note that Balzac, who was Gogol's contemporary (Balzac: 1799-1850, Gogol: 1809-1852), also envisioned a similar massive work. From Herbert J. Hunt's introduction to Balzac's "Lost Illusions":

"By about 1830 he had already conceived the idea of presenting the social and moral history of his own times in a complex series of novels and short stories: he also intended it to be an interpretation of life and society as he saw it, ..."

The only difference between Balzac's and Gogol's ambitious grand projects was that Gogol's was going to have one character (Chichikov) that would connect all the sub-stories and essentially consist of one book (of three volumes), whereas Balzac's was going to contain many independent pieces combined under the title "The Human Comedy" but could be read as individual books.

It killed them both. Balzac literally worked himself to death. Gogol, obsessed with his to-be masterpiece, `a palace of colossal dimensions', he imagined to solve Russia's problems and with his work losing its boundaries, he lost his mind, burnt most of what he had written after the publication of part one, and committed suicide.

The idea of Dead Souls was initially Pushkin's. According to what Gogol has written in his "Author's Confession", Alexander Pushkin had given his own subject to Gogol and had said that he would not have given it to anyone else. I am sure all literature lovers are grateful to Pushkin for this. Nobody else could have done justice to Chichikov and nobody else could have given us such a magnificent black humour book filled with hilarious dialogues and observations of the absurd.

I can open the book up at random, and read a hilarious scene or a dialogue, and what I read will be ridiculous but true. Gogol was a very intelligent observer. He only needed to exaggerate just slightly to get the comic effect. Take for instance the episode where Chichikov's three-horse carriage gets tangled up with a six-horse carriage. Can't you just visualize the racket that followed? Uncle Mityay and Uncle Minyay trying to untangle the harnesses with an entire village shouting and giving advise? Ridiculously funny and ridiculously real.

Towards the end of the book, Gogol leans towards solving Russia's problems by choosing villages over towns, a simple existence over an educated one, and religion over everything else. This doesn't work of course, but doesn't take away from the brilliance of the book. In the character Kostanjoglo, we see Gogol idolizing the perfect landowner and the solution to all of Russia's problems. Here, it is hard to say if Gogol is pulling the reader's leg or if he is being serious. We know that Gogol was not against serfdom, which, one can easily argue, was the root of many of Russia's problems, but if Gogol is seriously offering us Kostanjoglo's philosophies as solutions, then why does he make him as comic a character as anyone else? Does he want us to take Kostanjoglo seriously, a man who doesn't believe in any advancement, any education, any new technology, any progress?

After Kostanjoglo, comes the religious solution in the shape of Murazov. In these fragmented parts of the book, we clearly see the religious obsession that took hold over Gogol and eventually caused him to burn the rest of his manuscript. Had Gogol finished his book (or had he not burnt the manuscript), then maybe Dead Souls was not going to be as immortal (pun intended) as we accept it to be today. Gogol was capable of ruining this masterpiece with pro-serfdom, anti-progress and religious "solutions".

However, regardless of Gogol's declining sanity that is being reflected in the last bits and pieces of the book, Dead Souls remains a masterpiece and Gogol a genius. I think if he had continue to do what he does best, observe acutely and narrate hilariously, he might have indeed be capable of solving all of Russia's problems.

Don't let the fact that this is an incomplete book stop you from reading it. Just think of it as typical Gogol, because even before going mad and burning manuscripts, Gogol had the habit of leaving his stories in the middle. One of his short stories start with a warning: "This story is missing the end." And Gogol is not kidding. When you get to the end, you find out that the end is missing.

Dead Souls is the finest Russian novel I have read. Its characters are vividly detailed and intensely amusing, yet Gogol spends the novel tempting the reader to peer behind the slapstick humor of the story and see something far more significant and sinister. I've bought the book for several friends and am reading it for the second time myself. The Pevear-Volokhonsky translation is best - it contains helpful, well written notes and uses words like 'snookums' to bring home the endearing hilarity of the original.

Translators of Gogol are often said to do more harm than justice to his works - Russia's greatest humorist often end up more pompous than funny, and despite the many number of translations of his masterpiece Dead Souls, very few non-native readers can get at that elusive hilarity of Nikolai Gogol. So it is with this translation of Pevear and Volokhonsky. Accurate to the lexicon and syntax of the original, it yet fails to register the gripping tone of Gogol's original, and the most cardinal of sins - in Pevear's and Volokhonsky's hands, Gogol is just *not* funny. It's a little like translating Dickens without getting any of his comic genius across. Once again, Pevear and Volokohonsky's works get lauded to the skies (uncritically) all over America. To be very truthful, their translations of Dostoevsky is superb, but their translation of anything else in Russian classics - from Tolstoy to Chekhov to Gogol - is mediocre at best.

This is a good effort in translation and presenting Gogol as an overall easy read.

The story of Chichikov who thought that buying the ownership certificates for deceased serfs might help his ultimate goal of being part of the aristocrats. Through this task, he goes through difficulties,tragedies,funny moments and above all the fatal greed.......

After reading this novel,you ask your self if this was a real complete work? many consider the part One to be a novel by self! that might be the case! since there are many fragments missing in part Two. you could figure out the events in part two but you will be curious to know what happened to Chichikov in part three,if that made it to light.

The after-Napoleone Russia is beautifully depicted in this work. Gogol is definitely a master of narration...

The amazing part of all; Gogol lived in the same era of Dickens, Hugo and Stendhal.
dead souls is the Russian version of the French Les Misérables or the English Oliver Twist . they all telling the tragic life of the poor and guilty but in different tongues. they end up in same destiny.

Dead Souls is a magical novel that won't bore you but ignite you imagination to the utmost. highly recommended.

My interest in Gogol grew after seeing him referenced in several of Dostoevsky's work. Sure enough, some of his quirky short stories were a pleasure to read (e.g. The Overcoat, The Nose, etc) however this longer novel "Dead Souls" was just painful to read. The story itself is not very compelling as the protagonist goes from town to town doing the same thing: buying dead souls. The author spends an inordinate amount of time describing things that are inconsequential to the story and worst of all goes off on several page long irrelevant tangents. About three quarters of the way into the book the author reveals the reason why Chichikov was buying up all those dead souls and after that point, it was meaningless to read on and endure any more pointless rambling obvious observations of human behavior. Gogol is certainly no Dostoevsky. Lastly, although I've read several Russian novel translations by the Pevear and Volokhonsky duo and enjoyed them, this one seemed to contain many poor word choices and misuses of English words.

he most interesting feature of this book, in my opinion, is its special type of satirical language, mastered by Gogol and very much in chemistry with the story. He is able to depict the most inner parts of his characters' souls, in an animated and extremely vivid way. Furthermore, very smartly, he attributes the moral aspects of the characters to their physical look. My complete review of this book can be found at [...]

A Russian friend recommended Gogol and this book. I did a little research before downloading so was somewhat aware of what I was getting into. Yes there are very wordy sections. Many times one sentence fills the page. I found myself skimming these. But then you find a nugget - a beautiful description or an hilarious comparison. (I laughed outloud numerous times.) I doubt I'll read it again but definitely recommend. The Kindle format is fine. It is FREE afterall!

Nobody captured black hearted greed better than N. Gogol in this book. The characters and the events resonate just as strongly in 21st century America. Remarkably fast read for a 19th century novel, and in light of the current corporate scandals, this is a good time to read this book. I read Dead Souls about 5 months ago and I still find myself going back to it in my mind and laughing. It would make a great movie.

my review is limited to the kindle version of the penguin edition. there is a map in this version which i cannot read on my kindle 3 even with the zoom feature. the notes are at the end of the book rather than at the bottom of the page. the glossary is at the end of the book and not integrated with the dictionary feature of the kindle. using the notes and glossary are very cumbersome. for readers who find maps, notes and glossaries an important part of reading a book, i suggest buying a different version of the book.

Gogol, that pure Russian soul, at his finest, funniest, most charming and feverish best... It is a shame he never finished it... threw the manuscript into the fire (fortunately there were copies)... but such is the tortured artist, the poetic soul: Gogol!

unfinished -yes! masterpiece-no!
i didn't like this book. you can read the other reviews to get the flavor of the plot. i didn't think it was laugh out loud funny like "catch 22" or "the world according to garp". it did in areas make me smile though. it does also give the reader a feel for tsarist russia.
the problem is it has no meaning. it is not satirical. There is no moral. chichikov has no redeeming qualities. russian society is painted as lazy, drunk, and corrupt--not necessarily in that order. but gogol never finished the book leaving it meaningless. what is his message to russian society? who are the good characters and who are the bad? the most interesting character is kostanzhoglo whom we meet in part 2. he is hard working, intelligent and successful. he helps chichikov buy an estate, but we never know what happens as that part of the book is missing. the inference is that chichikov used him as he did everybody else.
what we end up with is a self centered antihero who uses everybody to satisfy his greed. his corruption is insatiable, but we never learn of his denouement.
gogol worked on this book and a sequel (which he repeatedly destroyed) for much of his life. he clearly had difficulty bringing any meaning to the story and must have also felt unfulfilled by it. It was an interesting premise that lead him nowhere.
there are too many great russian novelists to waste your time on this book. if you want a flavor of gogol, try his short stories.

Having read this novel in both Russian and English, I marvel at the brilliance of this story. The many levels of text and subtext are simply enthralling. Anyone could enjoy this story. This is a true classic.

Robert Maguire's translation of _Dead Souls_ is the best one out on the market right now. It is even superior to that of the superstar Russian novel translation-duo Pevear & Volkhonsky (their translation, however, is also worth purchasing, as well as all of their other ones). Robert Maguire was a Gogol specialist and had an intimate understanding of this particular work.

The free Kindle version of Gogol's "Dead Souls" is correct as far as part One is concerned. For part Two, the chapters point to those in part One. In other words, Part Two, Chapter One points to the first chapter in Part One. Not a big deal, but it should be corrected. As far as the book, the worst "classic" I've ever read. I'll just leave it at that.

I found "Dead Souls" through the the store search and clicked on the hardbound Maguire translation. The 6 customer reviews extoled the Maguire version as one of the better ones. The webpage also mentioned a Kindle version and included a link. I clicked the link. The same customer reviews appeared as for the hardbound version. There was no contradicting information about the translator, so I bought expecting the Kindle version of the Maguire translations. When I opened the Kindle version, I was surprised to see credits for translation by D.J. Hogarth. This difference should be made clear, especially when the reviews on the same page extol the Maguire version and you don't get that translation.

I liked the character developement and the humor and satire of mocking nearly everyone. The thing that bugged me was what happened to the hero. He leaves the ending hanging. Maybe that should be a SPOILER. Also the translation admits to pages and phrases missing, which drove me nuts. Get it from the library, not worth buying in my opinion.

i bought this for my Kindle in April, 2009. Unfortunately, this version is incomplete - the electronic version ends abruptly about 1/3 of the way through. I followed up with Kindle Support. They encountered the same problem.

Another author that I was expecting more of after all the fuss over him. Some parts of this book were mildly funny/interesting, but overall it just droned on and on. Had to force myself to finish it.

Gogol is a classic writer and, while the prose style, it's a bit archaic, may not be to everyone's taste, an essential read for writers. I really began reading Gogol after reading the work of Georges Simenon, perhaps the world's most best-selling author, as Gogol was a hero of sorts to Georges. You can most strongly see Gogol's influence in Dirty Snow (New York Review Books Classics), which I heartily recommend for all readers. For the most part best-selling writers aren't considered to write literature. Curiously, "Dirty Snow" is pure literature, evocative, moody, and beautifully written, by Georges Simenon and a book by a writer mostly known for his serial mysteries and pulp fiction. The work of Gogol that I most enjoyed reading was a hilarious play "The Government Inspector." You will notices that the work is most often packaged with other of his writings: Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector, & Selected Stories (Penguin Classics) You may be reminded of Chekhov and Dostoevsky in reading "Dirty Snow." What Simenon loved about Gogol's work, apparently, was his ability to craft a setting rich with ambiance which was so real that the reader experienced it. If you're not a writer who wishes to cultivate the ability to write as Gogol, and Simenon, did, or a student or teacher desiring a broad-base in world literature, or personally interested in understanding stories of the Ukraine or Russia, then you may not like this book. I do, however, recommend it. Happy Reading~*