![]() It’s described as picaresque. It’s a novel whose anti-hero, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, lives by his manipulative wat. Not least in pointing out how the wealthy often let money go to their head, resulting in obnoxious, morally bankrupt behaviours. It’s a situation you’d think most modern business owners would use now if there weren’t laws blocking it.īut our modern minimum wage is a type of slavery as it is, stopping most people from savings, higher education, and a better life.ĭespite the book’s age, there’s a lot of prescient social commentary going on here. They were, essentially, the wealthy landowner’s property. ![]() In Russia, up until the Emancipation Reform of 1861, landowners could own serfs and make them farm their land. He was ahead of his time, really, and produced some biting satirical works on the nature of life (particularly in Russia).Īnd his most famous work is about corruption and human folly.ĭead Souls was published in 1842. Gogol relied on the grotesque to create proto-surrealist literary landscapes, which you can read in short stories such as The Nose (1836). Different, for modern readers, but still a landmark work of fiction. ![]() He described his book as an “epic poem in prose” and it’s an intriguing read. ![]() A collection of short stories of surrealist wit.īut it was Dead Souls (1842) that really put him on the map of literary greats. Nikolai Gogol was a satirical master, as seen in Petersburg Tales (1840s). ![]()
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