Dead Souls(1835)

‘Dead Souls’ is considered the pinnacle of Gogol's work and one of the key keys to understanding the Russian soul. In the story, a minor nobleman named Pavel Chichikov arrives in a provincial town and, in order to gain social standing, disguises himself as a landowner. But, there's a catch: he doesn't own a single "soul", meaning no serfs. So, he decides to resort to a ruse, prompted by the Russian bureaucracy itself: He begins buying up deceased peasants from local wealthy individuals, who were still listed as living according to the registers (censuses were rare in those days). Everyone's reaction to the proposal varies... The poem has been adapted for the screen several times in Russia and staged more than 20 times.

Publisher Vizetelly, 1887