Dead Souls
Dead Souls
Book for February 2017
Group 3

Con artist Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov comes to provicial town N. in tsarist Russia, flatters the dignitaries and visits the surrounding landowners, convincing them to sell him their dead serfs who an paper are still alive because the state will only admit them to be dead at the next census until which time their owners have to continue paying taxes on them. Back in town, having successfully registered 400 serfs under his name and ballooned the pittance he paid to 100.000 roubles, Chichikov is feted as a millionaire and promised a bride until at the Governor's ball the drunkard Nozdrev exposes the whole scheme ...

The novel was first published in 1842 and established Gogol as the foremost Russian novelist of his time. The title may be understood as a play on words, 'souls' being used as a 'measure word' for a certain number of serfs, while the 'Dead Souls' would rather be the souls of their owners.

A good English translation is freely available on Project Gutenberg.

About the Author
Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born 31st March 1809 in a Ukrainian Cossack village, visited school from 1820-28 in Nizhyn in present-day northern Ukraine, then moved to St. Petersburg and from 1836-48 travelled through Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy where he fell in love with a Russian Count who suffered from tuberculosis.

Teased by his schoolmates as 'mysterious dwarf', ambitious and successful, progressive as an artist and backwards in his political views Gogol was towards the end of his life more and more ensnared by religion and, returned to Russia after a voyage to Jerusalem, let himself be brainwashed by a monk, burned his 'sinful' manuscripts and died after a 9 day fast on 4th March 1852.

Gogol's early works, such as "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka", were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire in works such as "The Government Inspector" and "Dead Souls".