Customer Reviews

Dead Souls

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'll assume the fact that Dead Souls is a five-star, superlatively excellent classic by Gogol goes without saying. You probably wouldn't be looking into this edition of Dead Souls if you weren't already familiar with the fact that Gogol was one of the seminal figures in early Russian literature, whose short stories defined an era of Russian writing. If you're reading this review, I suspect you really want to know: is this free Kindle edition worth downloading, or should you buy a different edition instead? I say: casual readers, go with this one. I'm happy with it, and you will be too. What follows is some more information, for those interested.

Edition and Kindle features: This edition of Dead Souls is the standard old English translation of Nikolai Gogol's 1842 novel _Mertvye dushi_, translated by D.J. Hogarth (a.k.a. C.J. Hogarth) way back in 1842 (this is emphatically not a modern-language translation). It contains a lukewarm introduction by John Cournos, which is interrupted for a brief preparer's note. The book has a linked table of contents, with links to the Introduction and each chapter. This ToC is only accessible by going to the "cover" and then clicking forward a couple pages; the usual Kindle link to "Table of Contents" is not active. (If you're the type to be irritated by this mild quirk, you probably want to stay away from all the free Public Domain Books editions.)

Introduction: The intro is light, brief, and pedagogical; useful for folks who don't know anything about Russian literature, containing many of the quotations about Dead Souls that "everyone" is supposed to have heard or overheard. There's also a tiny bit of biography, and a pedantic explanation of what the phrase "dead souls" referred to in 19c Russia. The introduction also has that rare and notable benefit of not spoiling the book's plot, so it's readable before beginning the book.

Translation: D.J. Hogarth's translation seems dryly literal, and occasionally suffers from its age. Reading this, it's easy to miss puns and double entendres and the like which populate the work in the Russian. That's inevitable with any translation, but hey, some footnotes would be nice. Some quite funny passages have been rendered boring, and others, a bit inscrutable. Instead of informative footnotes, we get endnotes for allegedly untranslatable Russian words, which provide their translation. (Sigh.) That is, whenever a single word in the Russian would need to be translated as a phrase in English, the original Russian word is kept, and the phrase translation is shunted to a footnote. Even with Kindle links for footnotes and backlinks to return to the reading, you will find this every bit as irritating as it sounds. (You have to scroll the 5-way mouse-pointer controller line by line down to the footnote, click to follow the link, read what it says, move the mouse-pointer to the Return link and click it. Given that Kindle takes its own sweet time with each of those key presses, this is abominably irritating.) Fortunately, only a few words per chapter require this.

Other comments: the words are clean and readable, and I don't recall noticing any of those typos, misread characters im tHe OCR reod1ng, weird spacing is sues bet we en wor ds, etc. which make some other Kindle freebies unusable.

Conclusion: a great budget edition for casual readers who don't mind not catching the humor that's lost in translation. The mildly irritating footnote and ToC quirks, and the quaint 19th-century translation, shouldn't scare you away from this freebie.

Gogol's best novel, and certainly one of the most impressive Russian novels, this offers a look into a long-lost class system - where human beings could still be owned - thus offering the central irony of the narrative. Perhaps slower than some might expect, Dead Souls is packed with the kind of detail that transports the reader into a rural 19th century world. A classic.

A Russian friend recommended Gogol and this book. I did a little research before downloading so was somewhat aware of what I was getting into. Yes there are very wordy sections. Many times one sentence fills the page. I found myself skimming these. But then you find a nugget - a beautiful description or an hilarious comparison. (I laughed outloud numerous times.) I doubt I'll read it again but definitely recommend. The Kindle format is fine. It is FREE afterall!

I got about 85% through this Kindle version and all of a sudden it seemed to skip a good chunk of the book...things were happening and characters were involved that I hadn't known about or been introduced to...Going to try and buy a different version and compare to see if there is an actual error in this one....
Update:
Ok, so after downloading a different version, I realized this "time lapse" was intentional...however, this free Kindle version did not have a note, asterisk, dots, or even a large space indicating a break in the text...it just kept on going as if it were one minute later....Now that I know the gap was intentional I can review the actual book.
While I'm not a fan of Gogol's style, I do appreciate it. This book, however, I found to be strange and confusing. I didn't like how the author would suddenly decide to write from his point of view instead of continue with the story. And while there were definitely some witty parts here and there, the overall feel for me was somewhat dry, which I sort of expected. An interesting read, yet not exactly what I'd call a page-turner...