Books with title Dead Souls -

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition.

Chichikov, a middle-aged gentleman of middling social class and means, arrives in a small town and turns on the charm to woo key local officials and landowners. He reveals little about his past, or his purpose, as he sets about carrying out his bizarre and mysterious plan to acquire "dead souls." The government would tax the landowners based on how many serfs (or "souls") the landowner owned, determined by the census. Censuses in this period were infrequent, so landowners would often be paying taxes on serfs that were no longer living, thus the "dead souls." It is these dead souls, existing on paper only, that Chichikov seeks to purchase from the landlords in the villages he visits. Setting off for the surrounding estates, Chichikov at first assumes that the ignorant provincials will be more than eager to give their dead souls up in exchange for a token payment. The task of collecting the rights to dead people proves difficult, however, due to the persistent greed, suspicion, and general distrust of the landowners.

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Dead Souls describes the gambits of a quixotic opportunist in provincial Russia who sets out to buy deceased serfs at a low cost from their owners. Chichikov requires evidence of "property," since he wishes to marry an heiress, and is able to amass the "souls" because their owners must pay taxes on them until thaey are officially declared dead in the rolls of the next census. An affable and personable business man, he is wined and dined in luxurious mansions and humble crofts, proclaimed a man of standing, and thought to be odd and delightful. Gogol's panorama of fraudulence is lasting allegory and aligns him with Swift, Voltaire, Balzac, and Dickens as one of the world's arch-satirists.