Dead Souls
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Narrated by:
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Nicholas Boulton
About this listen
Gogol's great Russian classic is the Pickwick Papers of Russian literature. It takes a sharp but humorous look at life in all its strata but especially the devious complexities in Russia, with its landowners and serfs. We are introduced to Chichikov, a businessman who, in order to trick the tax authorities, buys up dead 'souls', or serfs, whose names still appear on the government census. Despite being a dealer in phantom crimes and paper ghosts, he is the most beguiling of Gogol's characters. Gogol's obsession with attempting to display 'the untold riches of the Russian soul' eventually led him to madness, religious mania, and death. Dismissed by him as merely 'a pale introduction to the great epic poem which is taking shape in my mind', Dead Souls is the culmination of Gogol's genius. Translator: Constance Garnett.
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- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
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The Plight Before Christmas
- By: Kate Stewart
- Narrated by: Joe Arden, Maxine Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Clark Griswold was onto something...at least with his annual holiday meltdown. And since the last three weeks of my life have been riddled with humbug—another breakup, a broken toe, an office promotion I deserved and didn’t get—I’m not at all in the mood to celebrate nor have the happ, happ, happiest Christmas EVER.
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Gaslighting and games
- By FMC on 12-22-22
By: Kate Stewart
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He's Gone
- By: Rebecca Collomosse
- Narrated by: Victoria Blunt, Cicely Whitehead, Joe Eyre
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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My fiancé brought me tea and scrambled eggs in bed that morning, and we snuggled together, talking about buying our rings, and about our perfect wedding next year. Then we headed into town. He held my hand and gazed at the ring I liked best, a smile spreading slowly over his face. Then a glass of bubbly to celebrate. I felt flushed, excited and ready for the rest of my life with the man I loved. We race to get on the train home. It screams to a halt and I run towards its open doors. Made it. I think he’s right behind me — but when I turn around, he’s gone.
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Disappointing plot
- By TerriSweeta on 12-04-24
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Mary Jane
- By: Amy Herzog
- Narrated by: Rachel McAdams, April Matthis, Brenda Wehle, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 16 mins
- Original Recording
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Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams stars in Mary Jane, a poignant and intimate drama following a single mother’s journey caring for her chronically ill young son. Set in New York City, the play unfolds in two parts—Mary Jane's small Queens apartment and a pediatric hospital. With unflinching honesty and unexpected humor, we witness Mary Jane's tireless devotion, her interactions with medical professionals, and her struggle to maintain her sense of self.
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The storyline
- By Shanesha Duncan on 12-20-24
By: Amy Herzog
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Dead Med
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Patricia Santomasso, Scott Merriman
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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When Heather McKinley dreamed of becoming a doctor, she imagined curing sick kids and sporting pink stethoscopes. She never anticipated the sleepless nights, grueling exams, and endless labs. And she certainly never knew that her medical school earned the nickname Dead Med thanks to the tragic history of students overdosing on illegal drugs. But Heather would never consider doing anything like that. That is, until her longtime boyfriend dumps her, she finds herself failing anatomy, and her world starts to crumble.
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Hmm
- By Morgan Meaux on 08-22-24
By: Freida McFadden
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The Rose Arbor
- A Novel
- By: Rhys Bowen
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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London: 1968. Liz Houghton is languishing as an obituary writer at a London newspaper when a young girl’s disappearance captivates the city. If Liz can break the story, it’s her way into the newsroom. She already has a scoop: Her best friend Marisa is a police officer who is assigned to the case. Liz follows Marisa to Dorset, where they make another disturbing discovery. Over two decades earlier, three girls disappeared while evacuating from London. One was found murdered in the woods near a train line. The other two were never seen again.
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Skip it.
- By 4Boxers!!!! on 12-14-24
By: Rhys Bowen
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The Answer Is No
- A Short Story
- By: Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth DeNoma - translator
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
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Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
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Starship Troopers
- By: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.
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The definitive version!
- By Kristopher G. Hesson on 10-03-24
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Home Is Where the Bodies Are
- By: Jeneva Rose
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, Cassandra Campbell, Brittany Pressley, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm’s length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn’t been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before.
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Perfect Audio.
- By Black Women Read Too on 05-19-24
By: Jeneva Rose
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The Art of War
- By: Sun Tzu
- Narrated by: Aidan Gillen
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.
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The actual book The Art of War, not a commentary
- By Nemo71 on 12-31-19
By: Sun Tzu
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Ghost Stories: Stephen Fry's Definitive Collection
- By: Stephen Fry, Washington Irving, M.R. James, and others
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.
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Wonderful narration. Mediocre stories.
- By Michael Fuchs on 11-07-23
By: Stephen Fry, and others
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Brain Damage
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.
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Who Else Laughed, Cried, and Shuddered?
- By Jennifer Chichester on 09-16-22
By: Freida McFadden
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One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner’s four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. It is easy to see how Wagner was enthralled by the story and the poetry for the power of the tale drives the narrative: intense love, loyalty, jealousy, murder, duty, honour and massacre are all interwoven into a classic.
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Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in the provincial town of 'N', visiting a succession of landowners and making each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these 'dead souls' as collateral to re-invent himself as a aristocrat. In this ebullient picaresque 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.
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Solenoid
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Based on Cartarescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel's investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art.
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Challenging, but an engrossing, literary work.
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Listened to it 4 times in a row
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Based on Cartarescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel's investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art.
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Intense, brilliant and moving, The Door is a compelling story about the relationship between two women of opposing backgrounds and personalities: one, an intellectual and writer; the other, her housekeeper, a mysterious, elderly woman who sets her own rules and abjures religion, education, pretense and any kind of authority. Beneath this hardened exterior of Emerence lies a painful story that must be concealed.
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Challenging, but an engrossing, literary work.
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By: Magda Szabó, and others
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Romola
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Listened to it 4 times in a row
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Top notch historical fiction
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The Connected Discourses of the Buddha
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This volume offers a complete translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, the third of the four great collections in the Sutta Pitaka of the Pāli Canon. The Saṃyutta Nikāya consists of 56 chapters, each governed by a unifying theme that binds together the Buddha's suttas or discourses.
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Easy to understand...
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The greatest of all the medieval romances about the Holy Grail, Parzival was written in the early 13th century. The narrative describes the quest of the Arthurian knight Parzival for the Holy Grail. His journey is filled with incident, from tournaments and sieges to chivalrous deeds and displays of true love.
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This one didn’t work for me
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Pessoa
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Nearly a century after his wrenching death, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) remains one of our most enigmatic writers. Believing he could do "more in dreams than Napoleon," yet haunted by the specter of hereditary madness, Pessoa invented dozens of alter egos, or "heteronyms," under whose names he wrote in Portuguese, English, and French. Unsurprisingly, this "most multifarious of writers" (Guardian) has long eluded a definitive biographer—but in renowned translator and Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, he has met his match.
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Captivating
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The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
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The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories is a bizarre and colorful collection containing the finest short stories by the iconic Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. From the witty and Kafkaesque "The Nose", where a civil servant wakes up one day to find his nose missing, to the moving and evocative "The Overcoat", about a reclusive man whose only ambition is to replace his old, threadbare coat, Gogol gives us a unique take on the absurd.
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Brilliant writer, fantastic narration, plus TOC
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Horror Noire (2nd Edition)
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From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. This book offers a comprehensive chronological survey of Black horror from the 1890s to present day. In this second edition, Robin R. Means Coleman expands upon the history of notable characterizations of Blackness in horror cinema, with new chapters spanning the 1960s, 2000s, and 2010s to the present, and examines key levels of Black participation on screen and behind the camera. The book addresses a full range of Black horror films.
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An indispensable reference for horror fans, film scholars, and aspiring filmmakers
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Christmas and Other Horrors
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Hugo Award-winning editor, and horror legend Ellen Datlow presents a terrifying and chilling horror anthology of original short stories exploring the endless terrors of winter solstice traditions across the globe, featuring chillers by Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, and many more. This anthology of all-new stories invites you to huddle around the fire and revel in the unholy, the dangerous, the horrific aspects of a time when families and friends come together—for better and for worse.
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Excellent and Eclectic
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Butcher's Work
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A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age “Bluebeard” who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America.
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Another necessary work by Schector
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Oswald's Tale
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In perhaps his most important literary feat, Norman Mailer fashions an unprecedented portrait of one of the great villains - and enigmas - in United States history. Here is Lee Harvey Oswald - his family background, troubled marriage, controversial journey to Russia, and return to an "America [waiting] for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat."
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Outstanding
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The Go-Between
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Performance
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Story
During the long, hot summer of 1900, young Leo Colston is invited to stay for a month at a lordly, aristocratic manor in Norfolk. There he falls in love with his friend's older sister, who commissions him to ferry secret messages to the local farmer, her lover. His naiveté sustains their affair until ultimately leading to an event that will change their lives irrevocably.
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Great walk back in time.
- By Linda Ward on 01-19-17
By: L. P. Hartley
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10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
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Performance
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A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating, but her brain is still active - for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life - and the lives of others, outcasts like her.
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A word of caution before purchasing or listening
- By Esther V. Skandunas on 06-18-22
By: Elif Shafak
What listeners say about Dead Souls
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Laura G. Marcantoni
- 12-04-18
Classics can be entertaining even with dead souls
I enjoyed the book which I find oddly amusing. I was a bit disappointed by the sermon at the end. I can empathize with the author indignation with a corrupt bureocracy but his stand against it, in my opinion, weights down the novel. Mercyfully the moral of the story is at the end and not too long so it is bearable.
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- Nora
- 11-23-21
funniest and most fun
loved it, every moment was so much pleasure, would highly recommend. Gogol has a perfect imagination
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- Tom
- 07-15-23
Marvelous
Gogol painted a marvelous picture of rural Russia, post the 1812 invasion. He has mastered satire and leaves the reader wanting
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-24-19
Well done, pacing problems between books I and II
Very well done. The pacing in the middle dragged a bit for me, Chichikov's backstory is great, but there's a lot of impromptu poetry and descriptions of nature that slow things down.
Nostriov is entertaining and Boulton's performance alone to put a big smile on my face.
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- Nick Edwards
- 12-11-21
Absolutely great!
An incredibly funny and endearing book. It is sad though that it will forever remain unfinished.
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- C. E. Johnson
- 11-19-18
Hilarious and well done, but massive sections of the manuscript are missing?
The book is well performed by the reader, and the text itself is perfectly wonderful. I didn’t expect it to be so clever and comical. It’s fantastically funny.
Sometimes, audio books from Audible (elsewhere too?) contain glitches which seem to sometimes result in missing phrases/passages, or duplicated phrases/passages. The character of the glitches vary, but a glitch is a glitch. In this book, there are several instances when the reader says something like (paraphrasing) “an extension section of the manuscript is missing here.” It’s a difficulty of the audiobook format that we cannot easily know, I’m the moment, whether the author has written these words directly and means to imply somehow that he has been conveying a story whose true source is some unnamed 3rd person, which is how I took it, or whether there is some other problem with the book itself. And there’s a question as to how such problems might have arisen. Who knows! It’s not explained. At first, these missing sections, for me, added to the comedy, and added mystery and I wondered whether Gogol might later explain to us (he often speaks as the author directly to his audience) why the sections are missing. It seems, however, that sections of the actual manuscript are simply missing. After finishing the audio novel and researching my question online, I see that it’s common knowledge that the book simply ends mid-sentence. I haven’t seen, however, any explanation of the several other noted missing sections. There is one break in the story that is quite unsatisfying, unfortunately, a break after which our putative hero (or antihero) is suddenly apparently wealthy, and seemingly no longer traveling at all but is quite established. This is altogether confusing. Some greater warning, I think, is warranted.
Even so, this novel is truly excellent and excellently performed. I do not at all regret having bought it or listened and plan to listen again before long. A true joy and delight.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Paul Tretyak
- 07-16-22
incredible writing, ok plot
The quality of descriptions and narration are unbeatable, but the plot itself seems lacking. the characters are interesting and the social commentary on 19th century, bribe culture in Russian politics is solid, though deterministic at times. however, the plot itself doesn't satisfy like the narration as the story just kind of ends. the characters are developed thorough, but not to a real point. great read, nonetheless.
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- William
- 07-21-22
When a culture looses its soul
“Dead Souls,” by Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842, is considered the first of the great Russian novels. Originally, Gogol meant for this to be the first of a trilogy, but got stuck on the second volume, rewriting it at least twice. In 1852, in Rome, he became more and more depressed and with some urging by a Father Matthew and others as well as a feeling of guilt for his sins, burned his remaining manuscripts in his stove and starved himself to death. Fortunately, some portions of the manuscript survived and were included in this book.
In the book, a mysterious person, Chichikov, arrives in a small provincial town. Everyone is impressed by his manner and poise and assumes that he is a person of some rank. They invite him to their social gatherings and everyone wants to entertain him. However, he first has some business to take care of and begins to travel about the surrounding countryside with his coach driver visiting the land owners and presenting with a bizarre proposition. He wants to buy from them their serfs who have died (dead souls) since the last census, thus saving them from having to pay the tax on them every year until the next census, which could be many years in the future since the census was not done on any regular schedule. We are not told why Chichikov wants them but the benefit for the land owner is quite obvious. They get some money for serfs that have died and are no longer productive; they save money on taxes; what’s the downside?
Gogol uses this simple basic plot line to satirize the whole of the Russian upper class and the entire system. The land owners are more like caricatures and run the gamut of the various responses you might expect. There are those whose greed causes them to ask no questions and agree easily. There are others who are ready to sell but attempt to drive a hard bargain.
The land owners are presented as comedic and simple caricatures, with much of the novel's humor derived from interactions with them. There are those who seem naive and think that Chichikov is a generous man who wants to help them. There are those who refuse more because they just don’t want to give anything up that someone else shows that they want. Then, when Chichikov returns to town to handle the bills of sale we see the corruption and duplicity of the town officials as well the hypocrisy and prejudice in the focus on social status. When it is discovered that the serfs that Chichikov is purchasing are dead, rumors spread and grow. What could he want with dead souls? Is all of this a ruse to distract them from his real goal? Maybe he is trying to make fools of them. Some spread a rumor that he wants to elope with the governor's daughter. When he finds out, he decides to leave town.
And, we begin to learn more about his scheme. Chichikov realizes that, since serfs are property and landowners can use any property as collateral for a mortgage, if he can amass a sufficiently large number of serfs (that he can purchase for a pittance, since they are dead) on paper, he can get a mortgage and can become a landowner himself. He has purchased them. They are not listed in the census as dead. Just as we knew all along, Chichikov is a confidence man, a trickster. But the strange thing is, while the landowners, officials, and the upper class in general are caricatures, Chichikov is a character. He is charming, refined, and persuasive on the surface but conniving and narcissistic inside. And we eventually find more of his history and what drives him. And we may realize that the “dead souls” include much more than the serfs he is purchasing. It is pervasive in the upper class (and the living serfs that appear in the book are in the background, almost like furniture), including Chichikov. Gogol wants to show clearly how corrupt, fraudulent, and hypocritical Russian society has become.
And yet, not without hope. As Chichikov is reading through the bills of sale with the list of names in order to write out the legal documents needed to process the transfer in town, he begins to imagine the people behind the names. He noted how some landowners had simply written down names and some even using initials for their given names. As he began to imagine them as men (he only wanted to purchase men) “who had worked, ploughed, got drunk, driven wagons, deceived their masters, or maybe had simply been good muzhiks (peasant), he was possessed by a strange feeling that he himself did not understand." And when he found that one landowner had even written, along with each name, his skills and duties, his imagination ran away. We see in Chichikov at that moment a soul that is not yet dead, with a hint of life. But, he then goes on with his plan.
Book 2 is much shorter because it is a fragment. It seems that Gogol had, by then, determined to not just write a descriptive novel, but a novel that could change Russia. He worked on it for 10 years, destroying his manuscript twice and it became an obsession that drove him to finally kill himself. The fragments that remain show Chichikov going further and getting more desparate, but ends with him seemingly ready to turn away from his schemes, but we will never find out whether that was a fleeting promise or a true change of heart.
It is an old book written in an old style and may bore modern readers looking for action and progression to a goal cleanly without extraneous details. And yet, those details help give a much greater understand of Russian life in the mid-1800s and even what it means today to be Russian. If you can read it in the context of the time you may enjoy it enough to wish that Gogol had let us know…the rest of the story.
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- Reader
- 12-20-22
Fabulous first 3/4
A delightful sense of the absurd most of the time. Toward the end, there are some places where pages are missing from the original manuscript, and he gets a little bit more listed. But the first 3/4 is an absolute delight.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-18-20
Excellent
I only wish we had the missing pages of the manuscript. Such a great story and such great style....
May Dead Souls live on!
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