Considered one of the great novels in the Russian canon, this book is a symbolic snapshot of nineteenth-century Russian life and an intense literary experience…Narrator Tom Weiner has a deep, robust, nasally tinged voice that captures the tone of the book.”
Dead Souls
Narrated by LibriVox Community
Nikolai Gogol— 14 hours, 44 minutes
Dead Souls
Narrated by LibriVox Community
Nikolai Gogol— 14 hours, 44 minutes
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Overview
Dead Souls (Russian: ??????? ????) by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne's Sentimental Journey), it is usually regarded as complete in the extant form.
In Russia before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, landowners were entitled to own serfs to farm their land. Serfs were for most purposes considered the property of the landowner, and could be bought, sold, or mortgaged against, as any other chattel. To count serfs (and people in general), the measure word "soul" was used: e.g., "six souls of serfs". The plot of the novel relies on "dead souls" (i.e., "dead serfs") which are still accounted for in property registers. On another level, the title refers to the "dead souls" of Gogol's characters, all of which visualise different aspects of poshlost (an untranslatable Russian word which is perhaps best rendered as "self-satisfied inferiority", moral and spiritual, with overtones of middle-class pretentiousness, fake significance, and philistinism). (Summary from Wikipedia)
Editorial Reviews
Considered one of the world’s finest satires, this picaresque work traces the adventures of the social-climbing Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant out to seek his fortune. It is admired not only for its enduring comic portraits but also for its sense of moral purpose.”
Gogol's Dead Souls, has achieved a magnificent re-birth. . . . Rayfield's translation is one that Vladimir Nabokov would unreservedly admire. . . . A big, beautiful book and a mould-breaking classic reinvigorated.”
-William Boyd, The Guardian
Considered one of the great novels in the Russian canon, this book is a symbolic snapshot of nineteenth-century Russian life, and an intense literary experience. The story revolves around Chichikov, a man who comes to a Russian town to buy the souls of dead peasants who are still listed on the census, setting in motion a story of greed and distrust. Narrator Tom Weiner has a deep, robust, nasally tinged voice that captures the tone of the book at the beginning, but he doesn’t vary his pitch and characters enough to keep the work moving. He also reads a bit too quickly; slowing down would allow us to more easily digest the philosophical aspects of the story. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940169817461 |
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Publisher: | LibriVox |
Publication date: | 08/25/2014 |
Sales rank: | 735,628 |