Dead Souls - Hardcover

Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592247199 ISBN 13: 9781592247196

Publisher: Wildside Pr, 2003

Synopsis

DEAD SOULS, first published in 1842, is the great prose classic of Russia. That amazing institution, "the Russian novel," not only began its career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come since have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoevsky goes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier work by the same author, a short story entitled "The Cloak"; this idea has been wittily expressed by another compatriot, who says: "We have all issued out of Gogol's Cloak."

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From the Inside Flap

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. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translator Robert A Maguire makes accessible the full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.

"From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809 - 1852) was a Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity. Some Russian and Ukrainian scholars debate whether Gogol must be considered Russian or Ukrainian author, accusing each other of "appropriating" the writer. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirized political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls). The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", round out the tally of his best-known works.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wildside Pr
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1592247199
• ISBN 13: 9781592247196
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 396