果戈理（Н.В. Гоголъ, 1809-1852）是俄國批判現實主義文學界的奠基人，被車爾尼雪夫斯基稱之為“俄羅斯散文之父”。他齣生於烏剋蘭一個不太富裕 的地主傢庭。他所處的19世紀上半期，正是俄國農奴製瓦解和資本主義生産關係發展的時期。1830年開始瞭他的創作生涯年，第一部浪漫主義故事集《狄康卡近鄉夜話》，引起瞭當時進步文學界的注意，1835年，發錶瞭中篇小說集《密爾格拉德》和《彼得堡的故事》，給作者帶來瞭聲譽。在描寫“小人物”悲慘命運方麵的作品中，以《狂人日記》、《外套》最有代錶性。1836年發錶瞭諷刺喜劇《欽差大臣》，以現實主義手法，深刻而無情地揭露瞭官僚集團恣意橫行，違法亂紀的醜惡麵貌，獲得瞭驚人的成功。1842年發錶的《死魂靈》，辛辣地諷刺、暴露瞭地主階級的貪婪和殘暴，描繪瞭一幅醜惡、腐朽的專製農奴製畫捲。

'Rus! Russ!...Everything within you is open, desolate, and flat; your squat towns barely protrude above the level of your wide plains, marking them like little dots, like specks; here is nothing to entice and fascinate the onlooker's gaze. Yet whence this unfathomable, uncanny force that draws me to you?' Although Dead Souls (1842) was largely composed by Gogol during self-imposed exile in Italy in the late 1830s, his last work remains to this day the most essentially Russian of all the great novels in Russian literature. As we follow its hero Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant turned unscrupulous confidence man, about the Russian countryside in pursuit of his shady enterprise, there unfolds before us a gallery of characters worthy in comic range of Chaucer, Rabelais, Fielding and Sterne. With its rich and ebullient language, ironic twists and startling juxtapositions, Dead Souls stands as one of the most dazzling and poetic masterpieces of the nineteenth century. This brilliant new translation by Christopher English is complemented by a superb introductory essay by the pre-eminent Gogol scholar, Robert Maguire.