Dead Souls

Name: Dead Souls
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9781775411079

by Unknown Author

494 pages2009The Floating PressISBN 9781775411079

Fiction

Open in BookOwl Download on App Store

About this book

Dead Souls is a socially critical black comedy. Set in Russia before the emancipation of serfs in 1861, the "dead souls" are dead serfs still being counted by landowners as property, as well as referring to the landowners' morality. Through surreal and often dark comedy, Gogol criticizes Russian society after the Napoleonic Wars. He intended to also offer solutions to the problems he satirized, but died before he ever completed the second part of what was intended to be a trilogy. The work famously ends mid-sentence.

Publication Details

Publisher: The Floating Press
Published: 2009
Pages: 494
ISBN: 9781775411079

About Unknown Author

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (Russian: Николай Васильевич Гоголь; Ukrainian: Микола Васильович Гоголь) (31 March [O.S. 19 March] 1809 – 4 March [O.S. 21 February] 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humourist, and dramatist He is considered the father of modern Russian realism. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity. His more mature writing satirised the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian Empire, leading to his exile. On his return, he immersed himself in the Orthodox Church. The novels *Taras Bul'ba* (1835; 1842 [revised edition]) and *Dead Souls* (1842), the play *The Inspector-General* (1836, 1842), and the short stories *Diary of a Madman*, *The Nose* and *The Overcoat* (1842) are among his best known works. With their scrupulous and scathing realism, ethical criticism as well as philosophical depth, they remain some of the most important works of world literature.