Dead Souls: Nikolai Gogol

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of `N`, visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these `souls` as collateral to re-invent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov. Dead Souls, Russia`s first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.