The burned second and never-written third volumes of Nikolai Gogol's poem 'Dead Souls' are one of the most enigmatic chapters in the history of Russian literature, giving rise to a rich mythology that continues to perpetuate itself to this day. Drawing on memoirs and archival data, Ekaterina Dmitrieva reconstructs various aspects of this story: from the author's conception to the poem's burning and the almost detective-like discovery of an early version of five chapters from the second volume six months after Gogol's death. The author discusses the supposed sources of the sequel to 'Dead Souls,' as well as the restoration of the lost chapters, made possible by the recollections of contemporaries who heard Gogol read the complete version of the second part. Separate sections of the book explore the mystifications and stylizations that emerged in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, spurred by the disappearance of Gogol's manuscript and the revision of the famous thesis about Dante's Divine Comedy supposedly serving as inspiration for the three-part architecture of Dead Souls. Ekaterina Dmitrieva, Doctor of Philology, Head of the Department of Russian Classical Literature at the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the academic group publishing the Complete Works and Letters of N.V. Gogol, and leading researcher at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.