With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs. Translated by Isabel F.
Hapgood. Russia in the 1840s. There is a stranger in town, and he
is behaving oddly. The unctuous Pavel Chichikov goes around the
local estates buying up 'dead souls'. These are the papers relating
to serfs who have died since the last census, but who remain on the
record and still attract a tax demand. Chichikov is willing to
relieve their owners of the tax burden by buying the titles for a
song. What he does not say is that he then proposes to take out a
huge mortgage against these fictitious citizens and buy himself a
nice estate in Eastern Russia. Will he get away with it? Who will
rumble him? Does this narrative contain a deeper message about
Russia itself or the spiritual health of humanity? There is much
interest and some suspense in considering these issues, but the
real pleasure of this story lies elsewhere. It is an enjoyable
comic romp through a retarded part of a backward country, a
picaresque series of grotesque portraits, situations and
conversations described with Gogolian humour based mainly on
hyperbole. This is, quite simply, the funniest book in the Russian
language before the twentieth century.
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