sarahrigg 's review for:

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

3.0

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Published in 1842, the book concerns a Russian named Chichikov who wants to use the Russian love of bureaucracy against the system and goes around the country buying up "dead souls" to inflate his prestige. In Russia at the time, serfs are like property of the landowners and can be bought, sold and traded and are accounted for on a landowners tax registries. Chichikov has a scheme to buy dead peasants who are still on the tax rolls, relieving the landowner of the taxes he'd have to pay while also making himself look like a rich landowner himself, which he hopes will help him actually establish himself as minor nobility. There were things I liked about this book, like the humor and some of the descriptions of nature. On the negative side, I found the pace a bit slow and the episodic nature of the plot doesn't necessarily drive you forward to find out what happens next. I'm glad I read it, but it wasn't one of my favorite "classic" novels.