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Cover of Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Dead Souls

Nikolai Gogol

  • 372 pages · about 6 hours
  • First published 1842
  • 47 editions
  • Free to read
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1 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.

  • Social life and customs
  • Swindlers and swindling

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3 About Nikolai Gogol

1809–1852

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1809 – 4 March [O.S. 21 February] 1852) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the grotesque in his writings, for example in his works "The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat", and "Nevsky Prospekt". These stories, and others such as "Diary of a Madman", have also been noted for their proto-surrealist qualities.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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