Dead souls
By: by Nikolai Gogol; with an introduction by Clifford Odets.
Contributors: Garnett, Constance Black, 1862-1946, tr.; Odets, Clifford, 1906-1963.
Series: The modern library of the world's best books
Publisher: The Modern library
Published: 1936
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng; rus
Number of pages: 265
Description: A stranger arrives in a Russian backwater community with a bizarre proposition for the local landowners: cash for their "dead souls," the serfs who have died in their service and for whom they must continue to pay taxes until the next census. The landowner receives a payment and a relief of his tax burden, and the stranger receives--what? Gogol's comic masterpiece offers a vast and satirical painting of the Russian panorama as it traces the path and encounters of its mysterious protagonist in pursuit of his dubious scheme. Dead Souls, regarded as both a realistic portrait of nineteenth-century Russia and a work of great symbolism, continues to inspire twenty-first century authors and readers.
Notes: Translated by Constance Garnett.
"First Modern library edition."