Dead Souls Contributor(s): Gogol, Nikolai (Author), Hapgood, Isabel F. (Translator), Briggs, Anthony (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 1840226374 ISBN-13: 9781840226379 Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD! Click here for our low price guarantee Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions Published: June 2010 Click for more in this series: Wordsworth Classics |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics |
Dewey: FIC |
Lexile Measure: 1080(Not Available) |
Series: Wordsworth Classics |
Physical Information: 1.1" H x 4.9" W x 7.7" L (0.70 lbs) 496 pages |
Features: Table of Contents |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. Russia in the 1840s. There is a stranger in town, and he is behaving oddly. The unctuous Pavel Chichikov goes around the local estates buying up 'dead souls'. These are the papers relating to serfs who have died since the last census, but who remain on the record and still attract a tax demand. Chichikov is willing to relieve their owners of the tax burden by buying the titles for a song. What he does not say is that he then proposes to take out a huge mortgage against these fictitious citizens and buy himself a nice estate in Eastern Russia. Will he get away with it? Who will rumble him? Does this narrative contain a deeper message about Russia itself or the spiritual health of humanity? There is much interest and some suspense in considering these issues, but the real pleasure of this story lies elsewhere. It is an enjoyable comic romp through a retarded part of a backward country, a picaresque series of grotesque portraits, situations and conversations described with Gogolian humour based mainly on hyperbole. This is, quite simply, the funniest book in the Russian language before the twentieth century. |
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