Dead Souls

“Dead Souls” is a celebrated novel by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, conceived as a three-volume work modeled after Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” The first volume, the only one completed, tells the story of the adventurer Chichikov, who travels across Russia purchasing “dead souls”—deceased serfs who are still officially registered as living. Through a gallery of vivid portraits of landowners and bureaucrats, Gogol crafts a satirical portrait of Russian society in the first half of the nineteenth century.