Dead Souls

by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

Published 28 January 1971
Although largely composed by Gogol during self-imposed exile in Italy in the late 1830s, this work remains perhaps the most essentially Russian of novels. The reader follows Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned confidence man, through the countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise.


Diary of a Madman

by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

Published 28 September 1972
Illuminates the Russian writer's thoughts on madness, bureaucracy, and illusion in these five tales.