One of the leading figures in nineteenth-century Russian literature, Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) is best

known for his satirical masterpiece, Dead Souls, and humorous plays and short stories such as The

Government Inspector and The Overcoat, written in a highly original and trenchant style.

A mysterious stranger named Chichikov arrives in a small provincial Russian town and

proceeds to visit a succession of landowners, making each of them an unusual and

somewhat macabre proposition. He offers to buy the rights to the dead serfs who are

still registered on the landowner's estate, thus reducing their liability for taxes. It is not

clear what Chichikov's intentions are with the dead serfs he is purchasing, and despite

his attempts to ingratiate himself, his strange behaviour arouses the suspicions of everyone

in the town.

A biting satire of social pretensions and pomposity, Dead Souls has been revered

since its original publication in 1842 as one of the funniest and most brilliant novels of

nineteenth-century Russia. Its unflinching and remorseless depiction of venality in Russian

society is a lasting tribute to Gogol's comic genius.

Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange.