Name: Dead Souls (Nyrb Classics)
SKU: 4361650
Price: 601.00 TWD
Availability: InStock
Author: Nikolái Gogol
ISBN: 9781590173763

Type

Physical Book

Author

Nikolái Gogol

Publisher

Nyrb Classics

Year

2012

Language

English

Pages

400

Format

Paperback

ISBN13

9781590173763

Synopsis "Dead Souls (Nyrb Classics) "

An NYRB Classics OriginalThe first of the great Russian novels and one of the indisputable masterpieces of world literature, Dead Souls is the tale of Chichikov, an affably cunning con man who causes consternation in a small Russian town when he shows up out of nowhere proposing to buy title to serfs who, though dead as doornails, are still property on paper. What can he have up his sleeve, the local landowners wonder, even as some rush to unload what isn’t of any use to them anyway, while others seek to negotiate the best deal possible, and others yet hold on to their dead for dear life, since if somebody wants what you have then no matter what don’t give it away. Chichikov’s scheme soon encounters obstacles, but he is never without resource, and as he stumbles forward as best he can, Gogol paints a wonderfully comic picture of Russian life that also serves as a biting satire of a society as corrupt as it is cynical and silly. At once a wild phantasmagoria and a work of exacting realism, Dead Souls is a supremely living work of art that spills over with humor and passion and absurdity. Donald Rayfield’s vigorous new translation corrects the mistakes and omissions of earlier versions while capturing the vivid speech rhythms of the original. It also offers a fuller text of the unfinished second part of the book by combining material from Gogol’s two surviving drafts into a single compelling narrative. This is a tour de force of art and scholarship—and the most authoritative, accurate, and readable edition of Dead Souls available in English.

Nikolái Gogol

(Author)

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Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born in 1809, in present-day Ukraine, and died in Moscow in 1852. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1828, and after overcoming some setbacks, he entered the literary circles of that city in 1831. His humor, the treatment of themes, the use of language, and stylistic devices left deep marks and set a precedent.
The work of Nikolai Gogol, considered by many critics as the father of Russian realism, laid the foundations for what would be the Golden Age of Russian literature. Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Chekhov in the 19th century, as well as Zamyatin, Bulgakov, and Nabokov in the 20th century, acknowledged their debt to this author.

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