Dead Souls

Chichikov arrives in a provincial town, charms everyone who matters, and calls on the landowners nearby. He offers them a peculiar bargain: to buy the serfs who have died since the last census but still stand on the registers and are taxed to their owners. From estate to estate come the miser, the boor, the suspicious widow and the dreamer, until the town starts wondering who its visitor is. The novel explores greed and a country revealed by its small arrangements. Gogol's comic gallery turns gradually into a moral inventory.