the Reavey translation, backgrounds and sources, essays in criticism A Norton critical edition
585 pages
English language
Published April 17, 1985 by W.W. Norton.
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.
The first book is very amusing, but then it seems that Gogol does not know what direction to take. He seems to want to redeem his hero but probably got bored with writing about good people giving him the good example.
