He has appeared on TV in Two Golden Balls, Under the Moon, and Kavanagh QC, and was a member of the BBC Radio Repertory Company. His theatre credits include An Ideal Husband, After the Rain and Arcadia for Trevor Nunn. Nicholas Boulton trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he won the Carleton Hobbs Award. 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.ĭownload PDF booklet More product details ISBN: Gogol’s obsession with attempting to display ‘the untold riches of the Russian soul’ eventually led him to madness, religious mania and death. Despite being a dealer in phantom crimes and paper ghosts, he is the most beguiling of Gogol’s characters.

We are introduced to Tchitchikov, a businessman who, in order to trick the tax authorities, buys up dead ‘souls’ or serfs whose names still appear on the government census.

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. Gogol’s great Russian classic is the Pickwick Papers of Russian Literature.

Dead souls russian novel