DEAD SOULS

Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol first published in 1842 and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th- century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle-class of the time. Gogol himself saw his work as an epic poem in prose and within the book characterised it 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 it is regarded by some as complete in the extant form.