Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Why we picked it

For July, we'll read Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol 464 pages First published in 1842 About the book: Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town and visits a succession of landowners to make each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying taxes on them, and to use these 'souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types, from the bear-like Sobakevich to the insubstantial fool Manilov, and, above all, the devilish con man Chichikov. Dead Souls is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.