Dead Souls (Everyman's Library, #280)
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls is the great comic masterpiece of Russian literature–a satirical and splendidly exaggerated epic of life in the benighted provinces.Gogol hoped to show the world “the untold riches of the Russian soul” in this 1842 novel, which he populated...
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(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls is the great comic masterpiece of Russian literature–a satirical and splendidly exaggerated epic of life in the benighted provinces.Gogol hoped to show the world “the untold riches of the Russian soul” in this 1842 novel, which he populated with a Dickensian swarm of characters: rogues and scoundrels, landowners and serfs, conniving petty officials–all of them both utterly lifelike and alarmingly larger than life. Setting everything in motion is the wily antihero, Chichikov, the trafficker in “dead souls”–deceased serfs who still represent profit to those clever enough to trade in them. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel’s lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9781400043194 (1400043190)
Publish date: September 21st 2004
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Pages no: 488
Edition language: English
Category:
Classics,
Novels,
Humor,
Literature,
Cultural,
Historical Fiction,
Classic Literature,
Literary Fiction,
19th Century,
Russia,
Russian Literature
I wish only the complete first part of this novel had been published, because I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I found the fragmented, crumbling second part to be agitating more than anything. Several times the narrative ends abruptly with the explanation, "Here a large section of the original is m...
We can thank our lucky stars for writer's block, as we'd likely have set fire to the Dead Souls manuscript ourselves if Nikolai Gogol hadn't. Had he, overcome with religious fervor, forged ahead with his plan and complete this three-parter, separated into volumes each of crime, punishment, and redem...
The book is a satire of 19th century Russian society specifically and the human condition in general. It concerns a minor bureaucrat who is going around Russian society and buying up dead souls as part of a scam. The book is at times quite funny. It is also clearly foreshadow all sorts of stuff a...
Finalement, les deux interlocuteurs franchirent la porte ensemble, mais chacun d'eux s'étant placé légèrement de biais, ils se cognèrent quelque peu l'un à l'autre.Il s'éveilla, le lendemain, assez tard. Un rayon de soleil, à travers la fenêtre, lui tombait droit dans les yeux, et les mouches, qui, ...
I need to read the new translation of this by Donald Rayfield, published by NYRB.
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 by Nikolai Gogol, Larissa Volokhonsky, Richard Pevear, now listed on BookLikes)