Dead souls
by Николай Васильевич Гоголь
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Gogol's 1842 novel Dead Souls, a comic masterpiece about a mysterious con man and his grotesque victims, is one of the major works of Russian literature. It was translated into English in 1942 by Bernard Guilbert Guerney; the translation was hailed by Vladimir Nabokov as "an extraordinarily fine piece of work" and is still considered the best translation of Dead Souls ever published. Long out of print, the Guerney translation of Dead Souls is now reissued.
The text has been made more faithful to Gogol's original by removing passages that Guerney inserted from earlier drafts of Dead Souls. The text is accompanied by Susanne Fusso's introduction and by appendixes that present excerpts from Guerney's translations of other drafts of Gogol's work and letters Gogol wrote around the time of the writing and publication of Dead Souls.
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Previews available in: German English
Showing 8 featured editions. View all 47 editions?
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Die toten Seelen: Roman
2008-05, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag
Taschenbuch
in German
- 9. Auflage
3423126078 9783423126076
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Dead souls: the Reavey translation, backgrounds and sources, essays in criticism
1985, W.W. Norton
in English
0393952924 9780393952926
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Dead Souls is a socially critical black comedy. Set in Russia before the emancipation of serfs in 1861, the "dead souls" are dead serfs still being counted by landowners as property, as well as referring to the landowners' morality. Through surreal and often dark comedy, Gogol criticizes Russian society after the Napoleonic Wars. He intended to also offer solutions to the problems he satirized, but died before he ever completed the second part of what was intended to be a trilogy. The work famously ends mid-sentence.
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| February 2, 2025 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
| December 11, 2022 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
| December 13, 2021 | Edited by alexandrtovmach | Changed name to original russian |
| November 26, 2021 | Edited by TheNephi | Updated information |
| December 9, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |