Dead Souls

About “Dead Souls”

Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842. It follows the travels of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people he meets, who represent the Russian middle aristocracy. Gogol described the work as an "epic poem in prose" and intended it to be the first part of a three-volume series. He burned the manuscript for the second part before his death. Modern editions include surviving fragments of Part Two, reconstructed from his notes. The novel ends abruptly, but some consider it complete in its current form. It is a satire of 19th-century Russian bureaucracy. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)