Dead Souls is a comic novel set in provincial Russia, where serfs were owned and counted like property. A polite, mysterious gentleman named Chichikov travels from town to town and calls on local landowners with an odd and puzzling proposal. Each visit introduces a memorable character, from the sentimental to the greedy to the hopelessly careless. Gogol uses the journey to build a wide portrait of Russian society, full of vanity, gossip and small deceptions. The book is both very funny and quietly critical, and it is often counted among the great Russian novels.
Quotes
There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.
The gentleman lolling back in the chaise was neither dashingly handsome nor yet unbearably ugly, neither too stout nor yet too thin; it could not be claimed he was old but he was no stripling, either. His arrival in the town created no stir and was not marked by anything out of the ordinary.
As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind... Why is it that even in moments of unthinking, careless gaiety a different and strange mood comes upon one?
And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.