الأرواح الميتة

Who is this eccentric man who roams the vast Tsarist Empire in search of the souls of the dead? He does not ask for honey or wheat, nor does he desire hemp or cattle; The only goods that Chichikov wants to buy on his visits to various landowners are the bodies of deceased servants whose deaths are not recorded in the census. What kind of insanity would drive someone to own a bunch of corpses? Under the pretext of saving their owners from paying taxes, our hero aims by trafficking in these souls to obtain government subsidies granted to those who own a certain number of serfs, thus reinventing himself as an eccentric gentleman. In this masterpiece, the first great novel in Russian literature, Gogol not only painted a detailed and highly realistic picture of harsh rural life, but also, through his bold and witty prose, crafted a relentless and devastating social satire. This edition also includes two drafts of the second part of the work, which was never published.