Dead Soulsby Nikolai Gogol | |
| Category: |
"Fiction - General" |
|---|---|
| Pages: | 432 |
| Year of Publication: | 1842 |
| Date Added: | 06/22/2014 |
| Date Read: | 02/22/2019 |
| Notes: | In Czarist Russia, landowners had to pay taxes the peasants who lived on their estates, based on the most recent census. Since these counts only took place at great intervals, landowners were paying taxes on dead peasants—dead souls. Chichikov, an official always out for an easy buck, comes up with a scheme whereby he visits landowners and convinces them to give or sell their dead souls to him. He plans taking out a mortgage based on his "peasants" and absconding with the money. The book is basically an account of his visits to various Russian landowers—good, bad, lazy, efficient. It's all meant as a cross-section of Russian life. The book ends with Chichikov trying for forge a will and getting caught. He's released from jail and takes off contemplating a better life. But the book is incomplete and ends mid-sentence. |
| My Rating: | 5 |
Reviewed by Roger on 2019-02-22 17:46:52
