Charles James Hogarth

Dead Souls tells of the adventures of a small landowner who wanders the Russian province in search of serfs. In order to get rich from land in the governorate, he in fact needs to have a certain number of peasants, which is why he devises the dead souls trick. Leaving his job as a clerk, he roams the countryside ruined by famine and cholera to buy cheaply the peasants who have died since the last census and who therefore turn out to be alive for the institutions and for whom taxes are still paid.
He thus becomes the owner of a large number of serfs, which is a large amount of capital. This novel, conceived on the model of Dante's Commedia as a great poem about Russia, has a first published part, which by mixing realistic representation and grotesque register reveals the faults and vices of the Russian people, a second, incompletely edited part, which shows a possible redemption, and a third part, destroyed by Gogol, which was supposed to extol the spiritual values, and the gifts and moral riches of his countrymen.
It remains a satirical picture of a pathetic and somnolent society, dominated by petty impostors, living by subterfuge and deception. Gogol's masterpiece.