Dead Souls

A smart little carriage rolls into provincial town N., and two peasants debate whether it might reach Moscow—but not Kazan. Its passenger, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, makes barely a ripple, though the questions he asks are anything but casual.

In Gogol’s Russia, inns swarm with beetles, dinners arrive cold or ancient, and every gentleman has an official rank. Chichikov seems an agreeable, ordinary visitor, yet over dinner he quietly maps the local hierarchy and asks which landowners possess serfs, how many, and where they live. His interest has a peculiar purpose: he means to buy peasants who have died but remain on the tax rolls. With polished manners and a scheme that sounds impossible, he is about to test the greed and vanity of the people around him. Who will recognize what he is really buying—and what will they do when they do?

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