Dead Souls

Dead Souls (Russian: Мёртвые души, Mjórtvyje dúshi) 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 (Russian: Павел Иванович Чичиков) 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 (like Sterne’s Sentimental Journey), it is regarded by some as complete in the extant form.