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  • Published: 15 October 2004
  • ISBN: 9781857152807
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $39.99

Dead Souls




Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humour, and delight in human oddity and error.

  • Published: 15 October 2004
  • ISBN: 9781857152807
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $39.99

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About the authors

Nikolai Gogol

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are known for their highly-acclaimed translations of Dostoevsky, Gogol ad Tolstoy. Their translation of The Brothers Karamazov won America's prestigious PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize.