In Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol crafts a brilliant satirical portrait of 19th-century Russian society. The novel follows the mysterious and cunning Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov as he travels from town to town, attempting to buy the ownership rights to dead serfs in order to gain wealth and status through a bizarre loophole in the Russian system. Through absurdity, irony, and vivid characterization, Gogol exposes the moral decay and bureaucratic nonsense of imperial Russia. At once comedic and deeply philosophical, Dead Souls is considered one of the great masterpieces of Russian literature, a novel that is as relevant and haunting today as it was in Gogol's time.