Dead Souls (Masterpiece of World Literature)

The novel describes the story of Chichikov, a speculative liar (miser) who pretends to be a sixth-class civil servant and buys and sells dead souls (Russian landowners call their serfs "souls"). When Chichikov came to a certain city, he spent more than a week building relationships with officials ranging from the provincial governor to construction technicians. Then he went to the outskirts of the city to buy dead serfs from landowners who had not yet canceled their household registrations, intending to mortgage them as living serfs to the regulatory committee and defraud them of large deposits. He visited one landowner after another, and after fierce bargaining, bought a large number of dead souls. When he happily and quickly completed the legal purchase and sale procedures with the help of the connections he had already established, his criminal activities were exposed. The prosecutor was frightened to death by the rumors, and Chichikov had to escape in a hurry.