Dead Souls

An unscrupulous man named Chichikov — “neither handsome nor ugly; neither fat nor thin,” arrives at Governor N.’s residence. His simple yet ingenious plan — to “buy” serfs who are still listed as alive on census forms but who, in reality, have already died, in order to then take out a government loan in their names — seems plausible even today. Does the case of “dead voters” sound familiar? Well, of course! Gogol’s hell seems, at first glance, almost childishly simple and predictable, and yet, behind the foolish grin of the living dead lies a much deeper and darker reality — a grotesque and corrupt abyss at the very core of human existence.