Dead Souls
Nikolay Gogol
In Dead Souls, we watch Chichikov, a Russian that mysteriously appears in town. He makes friends with the local power, and buys, or tries to, 'dead souls' from his new friends.
It's satirical and critical, of the people of the time and also the reader. It criticizes the power of the government, the bureaucratic institutions and the 'feudal' lords of its time, and also you.
It uses a difficult language, but that may be only my version. There were only two paragraphs of 'useless' description, what is rare for older books, as they emphasize the detailed description of everything and everyone. The rest is good and the descriptions are well placed.
I strongly recommend this book, but only if your sense of humor is good for satires.
I only read the book I of the two, as the second one is a collection of chapters reconstituted from what's left of it. To know more, just google search it.
Memorable Quotes
"... a man is generous in the use of the word ‘fool’, and is ready to bestow it upon his neighbor twenty times a day. Let there be only one-tenth of foolishness in a man, and he is already proclaimed a fool, in spite of the other nine-tenths."