Dead Souls [Paperback]

Gogol's 1842 novelDead Souls, a comic masterpiece about a mysterious con man and his grotesque victims, is one of the major works of Russian literature. It was translated into English in 1942 by Bernard Guilbert Guerney; the translation was hailed by Vladimir Nabokov as an extraordinarily fine piece of work and is still considered the best translation ofDead Soulsever published. Long out of print, the Guerney translation ofDead Soulsis now reissued. The text has been made more faithful to Gogol's original by removing passages that Guerney inserted from earlier drafts ofDead Souls. The text is accompanied by Susanne Fusso's introduction and by appendices that present excerpts from Guerney's translations of other drafts of Gogol's work and letters Gogol wrote around the time of the writing and publication ofDeal Souls.

I am delighted that Guerney's translation ofDead Souls[is] available again. It is head and shoulders above all the others, for Guerney understands that to 'translate' Gogol is necessarily to undertake a poetic recreation, and he does so brilliantly. Robert A. Maguire, Columbia University

The Guerney translation ofDead Soulsis the only translation I know of that makes any serious attempt to approximate the qualities of  Gogol's styleexuberant, erratic, 'Baroque,' bizarre. Hugh McLean, University of California, Berkeley

A splendidly revised and edited edition of Bernard Guerney's classic English translation of Gogol'sDead Souls. The distinguished Gogol scholar Susanne Fusso may have brought us as close as the English reader may ever expect to come to Gogol's masterpiece. No student, scholar, or general reader will want to miss this updated, refined version of one of the most delightful and sublime works of Russian literature. Robert Jackson, Yale University