Dead Souls is a brilliant satirical masterpiece that follows the cunning Pavel Chichikov as he travels across Russia buying the legal ownership of deceased serfs, or “dead souls,” in an attempt to build wealth and status. Through humor, irony, and unforgettable characters, Nikolai Gogol exposes corruption, greed, vanity, and the absurdities of society in nineteenth-century Russia. Both comic and deeply philosophical, the novel is considered one of the greatest works of Russian literature.