A review by chrismichcon
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

3.0

Is it fair to rate a book that the author half lit on fire and has been pieced back together only after his death? Probably not, but the destroyed ending shows and was a chore to get through. The start, though, was delightful and witty: many caricatures of Russian men (and even a very few women) doing little comedy bits together as the mystery of the Dead Souls unfolds. In a book club series of Russian literature, it was refreshing to.movw past "Byronic" heroes into the differently flawed Tchitchikov.