Dead Souls

Dead Souls is a novel written by Nikolai Gogol and originally published in 1842.

Chichikov is a man of mystery. He arrives in a small Russian town with a strange and unusual purpose: to buy "dead souls". By this he means the records of serfs who have already passed away, but are still listed as alive in the government census. Obviously, his interest is to benefit financially from this.

With this somewhat macabre theme, Gogol explores themes such as corruption and greed, in which we see the rise and fall of the protagonist in his quest to get rich quick.

This edition of the book Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol is based on the English translation by D. J. Hogarth.

"To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchka—a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, landowners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. "